Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5896 in Software
• Brand: Atari
• Model: 04-20355
• Released on: 2000-06-19
• Platforms: Windows Me, Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Unix, Linux, Mac, Windows NT
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .31 pounds

Amazon.com Product Description
With speed in the straightaways and grip on the curves, you jockey for position in the heat of the pack. Riding the groove, you white-knuckle the last turn and slingshot past the leader toward the flying checkered flag. This is the world's first authentic dirt-track racing game--from qualification to championship. From the fender-bending, dog-eat-dog world of pure stock, to the souped-up production-stock racing machines and fast-as-lightning, loud-as-thunder, big-money, late-model series, this is racing on the edge. Aggressive driving, accumulated prize money, and smart vehicle and upgrade purchases propel you to the next class. Get your car in gear, or get off the track.

GameSpot
Australian developer Ratbag is best known for its work on Powerslide. Released in the final weeks of 1998, the game featured fun-to-drive cars and inventive tracks riddled with sharp banks, tall drops, and long jumps. Powerslide was defined by its tracks, as they served to set it apart from the glut of racing games that clogged the genre during the early part of 1999. However, there was one track in the game that was simply dull and uninspired by comparison: the oval. While this straightforward track was meant to familiarize you with the feel of the car and the general play mechanics of the game, it lacked any depth or substance. With Dirt Track Racing, Ratbag has focused an entire game around the simple concept of racing around this same small, oval track.

The tracks in Dirt Track Racing can be characterized in three words: oval, dirt, and small. They range in variety from regular ovals, to D-ovals, to the occasional figure eight. All said, the game has approximately 30 of these unimaginative racetracks scattered across a number of states throughout the US. And while the nature of dirt-track racing (this motorsport actually exists) calls for these sorts of uneventful tracks, translating them into a computer game makes them lose whatever real-life appeal they might have.

However, once you get past this glaring shortcoming, Dirt Track Racing actually becomes a robust racing game, complete with a functional money system, accurate car-handling characteristics, varying traction, and a variety of customizable cars. The game's career mode is split up into stock, pro-stock, and late-model car classes. You start out in the stock class with $1,000 in your account to buy your first car and pay entry fees for your first series, which is a set of racing events aimed at one of the three car classes. The events in each series are in turn made up of practice, qualifying, heat, and main races. To gain prize money and corporate sponsors for necessary car upgrades, repairs, and event entry fees, you must successfully work your way through these series, ultimately earning enough money to buy a car in a higher class and making you eligible to compete in successively tougher series.

The cars' physics are overexaggerated to maximize the effects of powersliding, oversteering, and countersteering that define Dirt Track Racing's gameplay. The basic premise is to "slide" through turns in order to keep the speed of your car and engine revolutions as high as possible when coming out of that turn. As stock cars gain horsepower through engine modifications, this powersliding technique becomes even more exaggerated, leaving little room for error. With power topping over 800hp, pro stock and late model cars require an even steadier hand during cornering. Thankfully, the game lets you tweak and upgrade your suspension setup to your liking, making the cars a bit more forgiving. Just like Powerslide before it, Dirt Track Racing takes some getting used to, but you'll be able to take the cars to their limits once you get acquainted with the game's handling dynamics.

Dirt Track Racing is also the first game to mimic the development of the "groove" effect associated with the sport. Before the start of each event, the track is watered down to give the dirt better traction. As the cars start to run laps around the track, a groove forms along the best driving line, causing that part of the track to become drier than the parts not worn down by the cars. Driving along the groove becomes progressively more difficult after each lap, as the dry dirt lacks the traction that it had at the start of the race. This forces you to either drive high along the outside of the groove or low on the inside of the track. It's certainly an effect that hasn't been attempted in previous racing games, and it adds a new facet to an established genre.

The game is powered by the same engine used by Powerslide. Long, streaking textures on the track and along the walls give a great sense of speed to Dirt Track Racing. The cars themselves are fairly detailed, and the sun-worn paintjobs and chipped sponsor logos lend more realism to the cars' appearance. Improvements in the engine include the ability it gives you to play the game from a 3D cockpit view, and the incorporation of a damage model that affects your car's aesthetics. However, unlike in Powerslide, Dirt Track Racing has no soundtrack whatsoever, leaving you to contend with nothing but the droning of the cars' big block engines.

A robust multiplayer component lets you and nine others compete over a LAN or through an Internet connection. The game even comes with a lite version of Gamespy for easy sorting of active servers. But even with all of Dirt Track Racing's finer points, it's hard to overlook its repetitive tracks and racing events. Despite the fact that the game accurately captures the nature of the sport it portrays, Dirt Track Racing ends up being a robust racing-management system broken up by boring races.
--Amer Ajami
--Copyright ©2000 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

One of a Kind!
Once again, GT Interactive has produced a game unlike any other. This game takes racing to a new level. Anyone who has experienced dirt track racing first hand will appreciate the job done by GT to put out a game like this. Not only does this game have it all, it has it all at the low price that has become synonomous with GT Interactive games. Players can choose from stock, pro stock, and late model cars as well as a large variety of tracks from the simple oval to the challenging figure 8. Accumulate money from wins to buy new parts for your car and make your way through the season to become champion. Just another great product put out by the game developers at GT Interactive

Absolutely Awesome
This is surely the second best driving sim to Grand Prix Legends. Forget the fact that this game takes place only on Ovals and Dirt. This is sooooo much fun. With outstanding (and fast) graphics and a very realistic driving model this game will have you staying up till the small hours of the morning regularly. The sensation of speed is brilliant but probably even better is the way the game puts you right in the middle of up to 15 other cars so realistically. The AI is great. You run a little hot into the turns and somebody is sure to slip up the inside. Each race is different. Sometimes one driver clears out. Other times, 6 or 7 cars battle for the lead for the whole race. The cars handling is superb. You can steer the car with the throttle and with (hopefully) just the right amount of opposite lock balance the car through the turns. Just like the real thing! If you like sliding a rear wheel drive car you will love this game.

The Finest Racing Sim Ever...
Yes it is. Ratbag Games made Powerslide the most fun, but Dirt Track Racing takes the joy of PC gaming to a new level. The Program is bulletproof, airtight and fast. FAST! Even on a very modest PC or 3D card is generates very smooth frame rates at very high resolutions. The learning curve for enjoyment is tiny. Yet there is depth enough with the different cars, tours, tracks, and set-ups that you can still be improving your level of play for months of gaming.

The game can be played enjoyably with any quality joystick but with a wheel and pedal combo this really shines. But the real joy is the Best use of Force Feedback in any sim. In most racing games FF is an annoyance... a distraction. In the otherwise great Midtown Madness games the FF is 'canned' effects that make the wheel shake when you hit things. OK. In DTR and also Powerslide, the FF is generated by the same physics engine that drives the car. It HELPS you feel the track, the surface, the turns and other cars. Since the FF correspondes to what is actually happening it ADDS to the emmersion rather than just making your knuckles numb.

The damage modelling rewards racing but allows the demolition style of cornering if you can afford to pay for the repairs! The tracks seem similar at first but with greater experience you come to see that they are all very unique. The different banking, length, layout and surface make these tracks totally individual and challenging. I have even stopped off in my travels to look at the REAL tracks depicted. At Paris, Texas for instance the game depicts hills in the backround. It is actually fairly flat but the TRACK is exactly right. I mean EXACTLY.

And how can you go wrong spending ... for this level of quality? And Now you can find the still amazing Powerslide for ... These two games alone fully justify buying a ... expensive wheel and pedal and top drawer video card. But they can also be a boatload of fun on a cheap setup and together cost half of one inferior game.

Finally, though the 'Difference Engine II' make use of excellent textures and detailed models and looks great as is... Full Screen Anti Aliasing makes this approach photo realsim. I'm not trying to sell 3dfx products here... if you can make FSAA work in Direct3D on your GeForce or Radeon card you're in for a rare treat. If I were king of a video card company I'd have this baby bundled in every product I sell. Buy it, play it until your neck hurts from leaning over in the turns, and wait for DTR Sprint Cars!