Open letter to Papyrus/Sierra,
You have created highly sophisticated
products in your NASCAR Racing games. Unfortunately, your assuming your
customer base is a group of unsophisticated morons with the attention
span of Beavis and Butthead. I for one have spent literally countless
hundreds of hours with NASCAR Racing 1. The feature which allowed that
was the save game feature. For some inexplicable reason, something which
was already in place and worked just fine, if a bit unrealisticly, was
simply dropped from what otherwise is a marvelous second effort in
NASCAR 2. It was not, however, marvelous enough to prevent me from
returning the product for a refund and going back to the original NASCAR
Racing. While the graphics and internal physics of NASCAR 2 are clearly
superior, for me, they do not outweigh the lack of the save game
features of the original. I have read that some people think of them as
'cheat features'. I myself do not use them as such, and frankly, so what
if they are???? After purchasing the product, the customer can use it as
he sees fit! It's his game! He can play it the way he wants too!
As you know, to setup and test a car, qualify, and run a race
at 100% length, is a monumental task if done seriuosly. It requires a
bare minumum of six hours. Eight to twelve is not out of line to a real
fanatic. Why have you taken the time to create such involved car setup
capabilities and then for all intents and purposes, eliminated the
ability of the user to truly make use of them?!?
On a purely logical note, What about power failures? I make a
habit of saving in progress races every 100 laps just to prevent any
really annoying surprises. Granted, not overly realistic, but on the
otherhand, it is just a game and ever since the time I was in second at
C***te in the 600 with 17 laps to go with the skill level at 105% and
trading paint with Marlin for the lead when the power went out
without any previous saves going back to qualifying.....well, you get
the picture.
The biggest question here is why eliminate it? It was avaliable
in the original NASCAR Racing. Microproses GRAND PRIX 2 is easily as
complex and sophisticated (probably more so) as NASCAR 2 and it has a
very simple and basic save feature that can be used at any time and
picks up the race exactly as it was running when saved! So why the
neglect of such an important and yet basic feature? Again, I can only
assume it is because some of the powers that be at Papyrus and Sierra
think of NASCAR Racing fans as nothing more than advanced Nintendo and
Sega players who don't have the desire or attention span to utilize such
a mundane or archaic and ergo, useless feature.
So, after giving it a fair trial run, I have returned NASCAR 2
for a full refund to my retailer. He told me I was not the first at his
store to do so based on the lack of this very feature. I will instantly
repurchase it if a patch is issued correcting this incredibly glaring
defect. In the meantime, I will be content with the original or other
companies products.
A disappointed customer,
Rick West