Home Page / PC / N / NASCAR Racing 1999 / Review Listing / Review

Speeding down the raceway, I'm about to head into the curve when my spotter screams a warning into my headset. "Car high! Car high!" I check my mirror and it seems that Bobby Labonte is taking me high. I slam down on the gas in hopes that the inside of the curve will give me the advantage. It does, for a split second. Bobby turns in the curve too soon and just barely nicks my car, enough to send me spinning off the track and into the wall. Pieces of wrecked metal fly all over the place. The race is over for me. But I'll be back next weekend.....

After playing the whole weekend in race tracks all over the United States, I'm pretty beat. But this is one game that hit the whole NASCAR scene right in the head. Sierra Sports NASCAR Racing 99 is finally one solid version of NASCAR racing for the computer. Not only can you race the NASCAR Cup and the NASCAR Grand National, but now you can race trucks in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series. It has the most tracks available to any NASCAR simulator to date including 11 tracks new to the computer scene.

NASCAR 99 is simple enough that you can jump right in and race a single race (with some minor details: read more about it in gameplay) but complex enough to completly modify your car or truck and even add your own decals to it. You can race for fun just one weekend, or start a grueling season long championship, where every race counts. Of course there is always the multiplayer option so that you can challenge your friends to 60 laps of wear and tear, gas smells, and tire squealing.

Unfortunately, it didn't start out so easily.

I'll begin with the problems I had just to get them out of the way. It seems that the manual was not very clear on some things. First of all, when you are finally ready to race, and you click on the race button, you do not seem to have a countdown. Instead you are greeted with the spotter yelling "GREEN FLAG! GREEN FLAG!". This can be very disturbing as you will always lose a few places. Secondly, and even more disturbing, after racing a race, and pulling into the pits, you have no idea how to finish. After hunting online it seems you have to press and hold the brake button until you are pitted in. Then, and only then can you press escape and end the race. If you do so before you are pitted in, the final results are not saved.

Having gotten past these small, yet large problems, I got on with the game itself.

I found the gameplay to be highly addictive. Once I started down the season path I just could not let go. Having so many setup options helped as well. You can have nice short races with wimpy oponents or grueling long 100 lap races with top of the line NASCAR pilots. You can make your car indestructable, or very fragile. Its all up to you and it makes for a very nice variety.

Game AI is, once again, very variable, according to difficulty. Unfortunately, making the difficulty higher does not make the AI smarter, just faster. I have yet to see a racing sim that makes the AI smarter, and not just faster. They still make for great opponents, though, and the higher the dificulty, the less mistakes you can make.

This game has all the makes of being a very replayable game. Playing season after season, car or truck, with even meaner AI and harder qualifyings will make for a long time of playing. That and the fact that it has multiplayer support makes for a game that has plenty of hours to give. Make sure you try this game from every angle.

Easy setup for any kind of wheel. In-game joystick calibration (a personal favorite) always helps. There aren't that many functions and the few that are there are readily reached with F1-F12. Not having to go back and forth from your wheel to your keyboard is nice, but sometimes you have to. Being able to quickly find F10 to switch view modes helps.

One of the good aspects of NASCAR Racing 99 are the graphics. These graphics, which can make use of your 3D card, aren't all that great. And in a way that is good. They are more than good enough to depict all the realities of a real life raceway yet simple enough to run very well. They are crisp and clean, and make for a very quick and smooth racing experience. I have a Voodoo 3 3dfx card but it would seem as it should run with the simplest of video cards, and run well.

One of the best aspects of the game was the spotter. Yes, he can become quite annoying, but you can set him so that he only says so much. It's nice having someone watching over you

The ambient sound was also excellent. From the squealing of the tires to the rumble of the engines, NASCAR Racing 99 gets you in there for good with such real sounds. There is no music, but then again, which NASCAR pilots listen to music while racing?

No problems here. Nice and easy.

After getting over the first problems I found myself not being able to put NASCAR Racing 99 down. Round and round you go but you just can't quit. And when the race is finally over, and you didn't make first place, you end up wondering, would just one more lap have helped?

If you are a NASCAR fan, or even just a racing sim fan at all, NASCAR Racing 99 is definitely a game worth getting. Once you feel the squeal of the tires on your first race you'll be on your way, round and round, and if you're good enough, on to victory and the greatest achievment of them all, the NASCAR Cup.