TOCA is a racing video game series developed and published by Codemasters, initially focusing specifically on Touring car racing but more recently expanding to cover a wide variety of motorsport. Since the series began in 1997 with TOCA Touring Car Championship, the franchise has been released on PC, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and Xbox, with particular success in Europe and Australia where the motorsports featured are most popular. Since TOCA Race Driver, the fourth title in the series, each new game is released under different titles in different regions, such as Pro Race Driver in the US, DTM Race Driver in Germany, and V8 Supercars in Australia.
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The first game of the series was released for Windows and PlayStation platforms in late 1997 in Europe, and in summer 1998 in the United States (as TOCA Championship Racing). Featuring all the licensed cars (not including privateers) and tracks from the 1997 British Touring Car Championship, the game was critically acclaimed by the European games press - especially on console where it was widely considered the best in its genre until the release of Gran Turismo several months later.
The success of the first TOCA game saw a sequel arrive a year later in 1998. Whilst mainly an annual franchise update of cars and tracks, the game did add more detailed graphics, physics, multiplayer modes and other minor features. Fictional (but realistic) tracks were added, and support races such as Ford Fiestas, Formula Ford and others also arrived. The level of car damage possible during a race was also enhanced, which was a significant selling point compared with the likes of Gran Turismo. It was called Touring Car Challenge in the USA. For Ps1.
As the title suggests, the series made a significant advance in featuring various Touring Car championships from around the world, TOCA World Touring Cars, which was released in 2000, but despite carrying the TOCA name, a fully licensed British Touring Car Championship (ToCa) series was not included. This upset a lot of fans of the series, but success continued. The gameplay overall became more "arcadey" and the replacement of qualifying laps with random grid positions together with the omission of penalties for bad driving made the game much more playable for the casual gamer. The game was billed as the first playstation game to feature 14 cars on the track, which pushed the console to its absolute limit. Curiously, unlike the first two titles in the TOCA series, World Touring Cars was not released in a Windows version.
The series moved onto the 6th generation of gaming in August 2002, with the release of TOCA Race Driver (called DTM Race driver in Germany, Pro Race Driver in North America and V8 Supercars: Race Driver in Australia). The game took a new direction, reincluding the BTCC series that the previous game had been missing but most importantly, a plot (leading to the game being labelled as a "Car-PG") where the user took on the role of a fictional race driver called Ryan McKane, trying to make a name for himself in a multitude of car championships, all the while under the shadow of his more successful older brother and haunted by the death of his father on the racetrack (as witnessed by Ryan as a child).
Race Driver 2 was released on Xbox and PC in April 2004, with a Playstation 2 version following six months later. Two PSP conversions were released in 2005 and 2006, the first being TOCA Race Driver 2 in Europe and Japan and the second being Race Driver 2006 in the US. The game continued to use a scripted career mode as introduced in the previous Race Driver game but dropped the Ryan McKane character.
The third game in the TOCA Race Driver series was released in February 2006, and continued to expand on the types of motorsport available. Open wheel, GT, Oval racing, Rallying and Offroad racing were all featured, and can be raced in either a detailed Pro Career mode or an open-ended World Tour. Up to 12 players are supported via Xbox Live and the PlayStation 2 version supports up to 8 online. This series is the only racing simulator that allows PlayStation players to race online before Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. It received good reviews, frequently being compared favourably to Gran Turismo 4 and Forza Motorsport, in the aspects of cars on track, damage and AI.
It is the first game in the TOCA Series that is available for Nintendo DS and was released in September 2007. It includes many licensed vehicles and tracks from across the world. It has also the ability to allow players to create their own circuit either using the stylus (albeit rather simply) or by using the custom made pieces made by the game developers. Then you can also exchange tracks online using a Nintendo Wi-fi Connection. It also has career, multiplayer and single-race modes.
Previously going under the working title "Race Driver One", Race Driver: GRID is the full and official title of the sequel to Toca Race Driver 3.
The game was released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, and Games for Windows on June 3, 2008, after over one million people downloaded the demo. It featured an improved graphics engine (a common complaint was that even on the lowest setting the graphics couldn't be handled by low-spec PCs) from Colin McRae: DiRT, has over 40 real-life cars and a variety of both fictional and realistic interpretations of tracks.
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