Early days in NR2003/Papyrus Racing Games, what were your experiences?

[DaleTona]

The little chat in the shoutbox stirred something inside of me. A sort of almost childish fondness for my early NR2003 days. And I know that everyone has been new to this 18 year old title at some point, some people veterans dating back to NASCAR Racing 1 or The original Indycar Racing(or if you are truly a dinosaur Papy's Indianapolis 500 ).

And over all those years, you make some memories. So what are your most fondly remembered moments in your early NR/Papyrus Career?

I started around 2015/2016-ish. For the first few weeks I was running the default content as is, straight off the disc (yes, I DID buy a legitimate disc copy, sadly that has been lost a long time ago). A bit later I added a few addon cars from TeamSBR to fill out missing full time teams (mainly the Ganassi dodges) and I eventually started tooling around with the in game paintbooth, which while archaic, I got pretty decent at working through. Through that I made my first carset, an eclectic mix of characters from my favorite videogames/cartoons, others completely fictional cars/drivers( I had a #30 Dogecoin car I do remember.)

About this time I found out about mock seasons and alternate universe carsets, so I gave it a whirl myself. This was my first proper carset, having around 46-50 cars, all based around an alternate 2015/2016 season. It has long been lost to time, but little tidbits I do remember are Danica Patrick was in the 2nd(3rd?) HScott Motorsports car sponsored by TaxAct, while the #9 for Richard Petty Motorsports was occupied by Dakota Armstrong with his Winfield colors who I had pegged as running for ROTY.

At this time I had no wheel, nor any idea of how to hook up a controller, add additional tracks and mods, or paint using an external program. My favorite tracks at the time were Bristol(fast and high banked, good for the lack of percision with a keyboard) and Kansas of all tracks (I don't know why, but Kansas was one of my regulars for driving at.) Due to the impercise and sub-optimal control setup I mainly stuck to arcade mode, and AI strength rarely ventured past 80-85 percent. But it was a hoot nonetheless.

 

[Highbank]

My first Papy Game was Nascar Legends, I could not wait to run a Torino at Riverside against the Superbirds and Daytonas AND all the greats that I had seen in person in those years.

Honestly, I was somewhat disappointed with the track as it was just so incorrect. BUT none-the-less I had a ball racing there.

Next it was Nascar Racing 4, and it was there that I started using the in-game paint booth...YIKES This would of been like 2003 or 2004.

 

[DaleTona]

My first Papy Game was Nascar Legends, I could not wait to run a Torino at Riverside against the Superbirds and Daytonas AND all the greats that I had seen in person in those years.

Honestly, I was somewhat disappointed with the track as it was just so incorrect. BUT none-the-less I had a ball racing there.

Next it was Nascar Racing 4, and it was there that I started using the in-game paint booth...YIKES This would of been like 2003 or 2004.

Ahh, simpler times weren't they. No worrying about microscopic paint scheme accuracy, slaving away hours perfecting complex bases, hunting down obscure logos and fonts, and fudging AI ratings/track files.

Sometimes I wish I could go back even for a day and just enjoy it, but I'm too far down the rabbit hole now.

I've tried to recapture some of that magic, but I struggle to bring myself to create simple/poorly done schemes for the hell of it. Also I'm much worse at creating fictional cars/rosters than I was back then, as I am stuck in a mindset of "this is how it should be."

Maybe we should do a painting challenge where we only use what's possible in the ingame paint booth. You can IIRC import custom logos and numbers, but it is much more limited of a system, and would likely force us to think about things in different ways.

 

[KingMaddog]

The little chat in the shoutbox stirred something inside of me. A sort of almost childish fondness for my early NR2003 days. And I know that everyone has been new to this 18 year old title at some point, some people veterans dating back to NASCAR Racing 1 or The original Indycar Racing(or if you are truly a dinosaur Papy's Indianapolis 500 ).

And over all those years, you make some memories. So what are your most fondly remembered moments in your early NR/Papyrus Career?

I started around 2015/2016-ish. For the first few weeks I was running the default content as is, straight off the disc (yes, I DID buy a legitimate disc copy, sadly that has been lost a long time ago). A bit later I added a few addon cars from TeamSBR to fill out missing full time teams (mainly the Ganassi dodges) and I eventually started tooling around with the in game paintbooth, which while archaic, I got pretty decent at working through. Through that I made my first carset, an eclectic mix of characters from my favorite videogames/cartoons, others completely fictional cars/drivers( I had a #30 Dogecoin car I do remember.)

About this time I found out about mock seasons and alternate universe carsets, so I gave it a whirl myself. This was my first proper carset, having around 46-50 cars, all based around an alternate 2015/2016 season. It has long been lost to time, but little tidbits I do remember are Danica Patrick was in the 2nd(3rd?) HScott Motorsports car sponsored by TaxAct, while the #9 for Richard Petty Motorsports was occupied by Dakota Armstrong with his Winfield colors who I had pegged as running for ROTY.

At this time I had no wheel, nor any idea of how to hook up a controller, add additional tracks and mods, or paint using an external program. My favorite tracks at the time were Bristol(fast and high banked, good for the lack of percision with a keyboard) and Kansas of all tracks (I don't know why, but Kansas was one of my regulars for driving at.) Due to the impercise and sub-optimal control setup I mainly stuck to arcade mode, and AI strength rarely ventured past 80-85 percent. But it was a hoot nonetheless.

dudeeee you started around the same time that I did, COOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

 

[Highbank]

You babes are making me feel really old

 

[DaleTona]

You babes are making me feel really old

My dad always says, it's not the years, but the miles

 

[Ceej]

NASCAR 2 was my first Papyrus title. I distinctly remember the very first thing I did was start a practice session and drive directly into the car in front of me because I didn't know how to steer.

 

[RacerWM86]

My first time came around 1996-97 watching one of my friends from the church my dad attended play the PlayStation version of NASCAR Racing, intentionally wrecking a computer-controlled Jeff Gordon to win a race (I think this was at Charlotte), and then in another, kept getting black-flagged and eventually disqualified (I think it was either Darlington, Bristol, or even Charlotte). I kept seeing "BLACK FLAG - You Must Pit" and "You Are Disqualified" with the black flag being waved.

Then I was up, but seeing that I sucked at racing games at the time (but I was improving my skill in that genre with games such as Mario Kart 64 and Cruis'n USA on the Nintendo 64 in 1997), I didn't do too well.

When I hit my teenage years, I almost never got to play a Papyrus game again, as going to a store after church, my dad refused to pay around $40 when NR2003 was new (I was around 16-17 at the time). I had owned the PC version of NASCAR Heat that I had gotten for Christmas in 2001 (15 at the time), and had wanted to paint my own cars, so that was the first thing I did before racing, but during that time, the Need for Speed series (Hot Pursuit and High Stakes) took up most of my time before my dad had to sell the house and move back in with his mother. I still have those games as well as Jeff Gordon XS Racing. I had another PC racing game, Sonic R that I got in 2002 in a double pack with Sonic 3D Blast, but my copy got accidentally destroyed in 2005 (I was 19 at the time).

Fast forward to 2011 at age 25 and I saw that someone made a tribute to SEGA-AM2's best selling arcade game Daytona USA, using NR2003. I had downloaded the DU-Univ-II (Cup90 bodies, Cup physics) mod, as well as a copy of NR2003, and started turning laps while racing in the #41 Hornet (the player car in the original game based off a NASCAR-spec Chevrolet Lumina using its single-player automatic transmission colors of red and blue), and my Papyrus career didn't stop there. I had won races in various mods (including Original Cup) with Adaptive Speed Control and AI around 70-80%, and even made a roster in the Cup90 mod featuring toy cars I had owned when I was younger, starting with the 1/64th Racing Champions die-casts of the #25 of Ken Schrader, the #10 of Derrike Cope, the #33 of Harry Gant, the #20 of Randy LaJoie, the #24 of Jeff Gordon, etc. during the Winston Cup Series days. I do remember a few years back playing a Championship season, and had the race at Rockingham (North Carolina) won, when suddenly a computer-controlled Dale Sr. basically pushed me out of the way and I finished 2nd.

Nowadays, I still paint cars and turn laps, and once in a while, race. I also have fictional characters I play with in single-player races in multiple mods, as creative writing almost as always has to be a deciding factor when I play games like these that have creation suites and encourage creation of characters and paint schemes. NR2003 is still fun to play.

 

[canadienhits]

I feel old. I remember starting sim racing in 92 with the old IndyCar Racing, then in 98 starting NASCAR, starting to paint with N2 in 00, went to N3 and learned about TBR, then to N4, and got to NR2003 late in 07, and joined SRD in 09, and started in PhotoShop in 10. I have friends still from when I first became active in the community for what, a dozen years (we have even a fantasy football league and our own NR2003 sim league) I look back at my paints from 07, I cringe. I did my first car set in 12 with the K&N East and West cars (and they look amaturish now)

 

[Slipster17]

Oooff...... Going to date myself here..... my parents bought me the original NASCAR Racing title for like.... my 14th or 15th birthday back in the late 90's. I remember how amazing and revolutionary it seemed to me at the time and how much of a polygonal mess it feels like today. My parents have always joked that I learned to drive with my steering wheel and pedal combo in that game, lol.

I've been dabbling in the paint shop since like day #1. Back when you had a limited (was it even 256 originally? I feel like it was less than that) color palette to work with.... and all of the manufacturer decals were 'stamps' that existed for you to use in the paintshop. Then, along came N2.... and N3..... and N4. I had the Busch Series ad-on when it happened. I recall on one of those titles Papy lost the license to use 'offical' manufacturer likenesses so all of the cars suddenly had the same same exact generic 'stock car' headlights and grills despite still having all the correct paint schemes and numbers for drivers from that time.

I remember loving the road courses more than anything (still do - I autocross my own car and will never miss a chance to go bombing around the twisty mountain roads in my area). I remember the two 'fictional' road courses that were included with one of the releases. The one through the red rock canyon with that ridiculously long and steep downhill straight and the nearly completely flat one through the mid-west fields.

I remember the first time I started trolling TheUSPits for cars and mods to download.

The one paint shop artist that sticks in my mind from back then was iFreezn. Jesus Christ I aspired so badly to have the creative spark and talent that man had. His work and tutorials are the reason I really started looking seriously into how to import/export paint schemes from an outside photo editing program.

NR2k2 happened when I was in High School and I think that's where I really started to hit my stride. I got hooked up with Abuchl and Mudd and Brian and all the others who's screennames escape me at the moment and spent a number of years painting and contributing to SBR. I started off almost exclusively with the 2k2 stuff and eventually transitioned into 2k3. My little pocket website on SBR - which IS still there BTW! - had like every available template resource and driver's suit and sponsor logos, etc. from my 2k2 paints at that time. I painted pretty consistently all through college but after graduating a whole series of moves and jobs (and lack of internet) really caused me to have to abandon the community for the time being.

So from like 2006 until late 2018 I had no notion of anything happening with this game.

Which brings us to the present.

Words cannot describe how exciting it is to pick back up with an old hobby like this and find the community more vibrant and diverse than it ever was during my initially tenure. The shear quality and quantity of mods for every single era of NASCAR that anyone could ever hope find. I'm a little sad that it seems like a lot of the friends I made way back when are unreachable or gone like I once was, but that feeling is tempered by the new friends I've found here since returning.

I can't believe that this game is as old as it is and still looks as good as it does - and all of you who contribute to this community are to thank for that. YOU ARE ALL AMAZING. All of you. The modders. The Track Builders. The 3d Rendering artists. Those of us down and dirty in the paint shop. I am amazed every time I log on here with the new content that I see. Here I am, 25 years after first installing a Papy Racing game and I am still learning and growing as an artist based on the help and input I receive. Thank you all for that - and I hope to remain a part of this community for a long time to come. I look forward to what the future brings!

 

[canadienhits]

Oh gosh, loved everything from SBR. Thanks! Oh, USPits, wow, I plum forgot about how important they were. Back in those days I couldn't create so I downloaded from y'all, USPits and MaxGrafx.

 

[The_Tigg]

I did Pole Position, you babies.

 

[Slipster17]

Also - raise your hand if you've turned off damage for yourself and gone and driven like..... Talladega backwards to see what kind of spectacular messes you could cause ramming people at speed? LMAO. I did that A LOT in my younger days.

 

[canadienhits]

Pole Position in the arcades, holy cow.

 

[Slipster17]

Oh gosh, loved everything from SBR. Thanks! Oh, USPits, wow, I plum forgot about how important they were. Back in those days I couldn't create so I downloaded from y'all, USPits and MaxGrafx.

Jesus - how did I forget to mention MasGrafx in my ramble? INCONCEAVABLE. Painted a personal driver suit for him once!

 

[Slipster17]

Pole Position in the arcades, holy cow.

How about "Outrun" in the arcade?

 

[canadienhits]

I remember that my fondness for Michigan/California (Auto Club) was because they were wide and I could avoid wrecking. Hated Mville/Bristol because there was nowhere to go.

 

[Slipster17]

I always used to leave the 'assisted' braking on when I did short tracks.....

 

[Lastlap]

I had Indy 500, NR1 floppy version, NR1 CD version (had the DOS paintshop), NR1 Track Pack, NR2, NR3, NR4, NR2k2 and NR2k3. Never had Legends or 1999 edition in the UK.

 

[JNorton (WKC)]

I've owned every Papy game that has been released since the Indianapolis 500 Dos game in 1989.