NASCAR Racing 2003 Season
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NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, or NR2003 for short, is a computer racing simulator released in 2003 by Papyrus for PC. The game was the last to be released by the company before they lost the license to release NASCAR games to EA Sports. The game included all of the 2003 tracks and many of the drivers, and featured the cars of Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick on the front cover.
The game is best known for its multiplayer interface, which at its peak was used by up to 2500 drivers at any one time, which resulted in fields of up to 43 human drivers driving simultaneously in online races. Several leagues for the game still exist, and the well-known TSW 500 uses the game. The game, however, has seen its peak in popularity and now rarely exceeds 500 players online - the more popular racing servers still stay full most of the time. In addition, to this day, downloads of updated cars, tracks and templates have allowed users to have a current roster and current look.
NASCAR driving superstars Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Martin Truex Jr. are known to be players of the game, and many professional drivers are said to use the game to practice tracks before races. These included 2006 rookie Denny Hamlin, who trained for the Pocono 500 at Pocono Raceway, going on to win the race at a track notoriously tough for rookies. (It should be noted, however, that Earnhardt Jr. is now a paid endorser for EA Sports.)
NR2003 is also one of the few 'serious' racing simulations which have also been published for the Macintosh, in a MacOS X version.
Motorsports Image used PCs running NR2003 as the central component of their NASCAR simulator products. These included several show-cars and repurposed race vehicles refitted as simulators, and a line of single-seat open models with pitch/roll motion bases. The Coca-Cola Company currently (as of 2006) operates a set of them as mobile promotional events relating to their numerous NASCAR sponsorships; one-to-three day stops at Wal-Mart stores, and some other retailers in the midwestern United, are the most common venues. However, Motorsports Image is, reportedly, no longer in business, meaning that operators of these simulators are no longer being provided maintenance and technical support.
As of July 2006, the game began commanding prices of $90 and above on Ebay, as the game is no longer available in stores.
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[edit] Modding Community
Perhaps one of the strongest aspects that has allowed this game to succeed much beyond its shelf life is the modding community. As it was known that this would be the last in a series of games from Papyrus, modding was begun almost immediately. When Papyrus was on its way out of business, it chose to release tools to mod the sim to the community, enabling modders to unlock the three other physics engines shipped with the game but previously unused: BGN, CTS, and Trans-Am physics. Spearheaded by the Project Wildfire Group and The US Pits, the first sets of mods began appearing.
[edit] PWF CTS Mod
Seeing as the original NR2003 only came with Cup model and physics, the need for mods for the other series was becoming apparent. By reworking body styles and physics an accurate representation of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. This first mod was immensely popular as there were differences in driving styles needed to successfully win in this mod. In addition, PWF continued to put out new and revised tracks to better suit this series.
[edit] PWF BGN Mod
Seeing as a mod was created for the truck series, soon after a mod for the NASCAR Busch Series was released to the public. Using the BGN Series physics and keeping the original Cup bodies, as the Busch Series uses an almost identical chassis, the mod proved to be an accurate representation of the real Busch Series. In addition, this mod provided several tweaks to the overall game. Scuff marks now appeared on the sides of cars after receiving damage and tape on a drivers pitstall was now allowed to be painted; these features were later offered in a patch for the Cup Series.
[edit] The US Pits Aero88 Mod
Perhaps the most interesting mod to originally come out was the creation of a mod based around the 1988 Winston Cup season. This mod had car models from over 15 years ago, and appealed greatly to the old-school racer. Limitations in the physics engine caused The US Pits to use the truck physics in order to replicate the less-powerful engines and less-aerodynamic bodies used in the late 80's. Older renditions of tracks were created to go along with this mods and numerous online leagues formed around it. Because of the design of the body styles, templates were made for cars that ranged from as early as 1980 season to as late as the 1994 season.
And there are more mods for NR2003 such as, the 1970 Grand National mod, a latemodel mod, an open wheel mod, a Trans-Am mod, ASA and ARCA mod.
[edit] Painting Community
One of the more interesting resultants of this sim was the rise the painting community. The ability to paint your own car and race it against the stars of the NASCAR series has been one of the most appealing aspects of the game, and the skills of said painters have grown to be remarkable. Today there are artists designing paint schemes for real NASCAR teams that had their start painting car models for NR2003. In edition to this there is an extensive rendering community designed to properly show case these paint jobs. A render is a more graphically pleasing view of a paint scheme than an in-game shot. The reasons behind this are a higher polygon count which gives a more accurate representations of the cars. This has led to creative placement of paint schemes in realistic environments.
[edit] See also
[edit] Major Races
- TSW Online 500
- FLM 400
- Bullrun 1000
- Indy 500
- Le Mans 24 Hours Race
- 12 Hours of Daytona
- 12 Hours of Watkins Glen
- DMP 400
[edit] External links
- Papyrus - publisher's official website
- Team SBR - A website designs cars for Nascar Racing 2003 Season and also Nascar Racing 2002 Season and Nascar Racing 4
- MasGrafx - A website with cars, tracks, tools and other add-ons for the game
- Blackhole Motorsports - A sim racing website that has many downloads for NR2003
| Racing simulations by Papyrus Design Group |
|---|
| Open wheel racing |
| Indianapolis 500: The Simulation | IndyCar Racing | IndyCar Racing II | Grand Prix Legends |
| NASCAR Racing series |
| NASCAR Racing | NASCAR Racing 2 | NASCAR Racing 3 | NASCAR Racing 4 | NASCAR Racing 2002 Season | NASCAR Racing 2003 Season | NASCAR Craftsman Truck Racing | NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition | NASCAR Legends | NASCAR Grand National Series Expansion Pack |
| Other Papyrus simulations |
| Road Rash (1996 Windows port) | SODA Off-Road Racing |
