>thanks to you guys, but we still can't say when sim racing was 'born'. How do
>we go about establishing specific date?
What is the criteria for a sim? Clearly there has been a continuum of
"realism" over the years of creating racing games, and some of them now
are really good sims. Where do we draw the line to say "every game that has
these features is a sim?"
With all that in mind, I vote for Night Driver, from Atari, 10/29/1976
(see it at http://www.tc.umn.edu/~johns594/arcade/klov/N/Night_Driver.html)
It has a steering wheel and gas pedal. How realistic! :) It came out when
I was 3, so I never played it (though I played the Atari 2600 home version
a bit).
The next month came 280-Zzzap! (play it on MAME) in 11/76, possibly the
first game to be based on a real car (the Datsun 280Z). I'm sure it was a
totally realistic driving model. :)
The first driving game I though was pretty realistic (as a 9-year old)
was Turbo by Sega in 1981
(http://www.tc.umn.edu/~johns594/arcade/klov/T/Turbo.html).
I was really hooked on OutRun (Sega, 1986) and liked that you had brakes
and a shifter, could do burnouts, the car actually looked like it was
turning, etc., but it still wasn't much of a sim.
Virtua Racing (Sega (again!), early 90s) was the first 3D (polygon)-based
racer I played, and I loved it. It really set a new standard in graphical
and control realism IMHO, at least, for an arcade game.
Finally, after I learned how to drive and did some road course driving
schools, my vote for "realistic enough for me" (using a wheel and pedals)
goes to Indycar Racing I by Papyrus. I upgraded my 386 to a 486 just to
play it back in 1993.
It was so different than arcade racers that I found it really frustrating
and basically ignored it for 6 years! Now it really screams on my 400Mhz
box! :) Actually, now I'm into GPL and IndyCar II (aka CART Racing).
--
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