15 Years Already? Four Great Racing Titles Released in 2008

GTR Evolution.jpg
Racing games and sims are built with endless hours of replayability in mind these days, but they are not released as frequently as they used to be – if that is for the better or the worse of the genre is up for debate. 15 years ago, this was different, but 2008 did not just spawn a bunch of low-quality titles – in fact, a few still hold up well to this day.

The racing world was much different in 2008: Lewis Hamilton only became a Formula One World Champion by the end of that season, taking his first of seven titles, the FIA GT Series was still in full swing before trying to become a World Championship (and subsequently folding), and open-top prototypes were still the car to have at Le Mans.

Interestingly, no new F1 games were released that year, as Codemasters only started their series in 2009 with a Wii-only version and previous rights owner Sony had last made a game in 2006. However, that does not mean there was not plenty of vehicles and tracks to race – and one title even is an important cornerstone of the sim racing genre to this day.

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Yannik Haustein
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

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R
F35C said:
>the most recent entry called Grid Autosport was released in 2022

it's legends though.
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Grid Autosport was the best of the Grid series imo. But the best multi categories game from Codemasters was Toca Rave Driver 3. GRID was such a disappointment, I have to disagree, not any aspect was better than TDU3 (the overdone post production effects were such a downgrade after the clean aspect of TDU3, the handling was just arcade, although TDU3 had realistic handling, the poor diversity of categories after TDU3 was just a shame...).

One important information : GRID isn't the first game with the rewind mechanic, SCAR, from Milestone did introduce it a few years before. It was a good game, with great cars (alfa romeos), with the stress mechanic (competitor losing his means when you were following him closely, if not strong enough, and you too could get your vision blurred). These.mechanics came back in (corvette) Evolution GT, still by Milestone, still before GRID. This 2 games also had introduced fictional famous city tracks as the GRID series did after.

When it came out GRID just felt a bad copy , in terms of creativity, of these 2 previous games. After the magic of TOCA Race Driver 3, why??? GRID got rid of everything that was good in TDU3 except the cars destruction, which became ts main sale point. Anyway it's commonly accepted that GRID was the first game with rewind mechanics, but no, and it is not from Codemasters. I even don't know whether Milestone was the first developper to introduuce them. I think I have heard about such mechanics in an older race title, but I'm not sure and I can't remember the game.

From 2008, another interesting game came out, Project Torque / Level-R, a car racing MMO, I haven't played it a lot, as I wasn't in MMO games, but the physics were the same than those of Cross Racing Championship and LA Street Racing, so really good (CRC was such a unique game, and it still is, I want.to get the new Steam version now!). Project Torque has been revived 2 or 3 years ago on Steam, I don't know whether there are many active players.

GTR Evo, nothing to say, it was an amazing racing sim and still is.

These 2000 years (and early 2010s) were great times for arcade and sim titles, many great and solid experiences, still relevant and fun today, came out.
 
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T
gwaldock said:
I started with "Indycar Racing", then "Grand Prix Legends" > "rFactor" > "GT Legends" . "GTR2" > "iRacing" > "rFactor2" > "GTR Evo" > "Race" Series > "ACC" etc., etc.. A never ending parade of software, but no complaints from me. :thumbsup:
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Haha, I played all the titles in that list back in the day. I would also add all the grand prix games, F1 racing simulation, F1 racing championship, F1 challenge, Nascar Racing 2003, GTR1, live for speed, and all the Colin McRae titles, Richard Burns rallye.

Great times spent then. And fond memories in my first online races on Vroc and later iGOR playing GPL all evening long. The additional enjoyment with the first mods, and modifying the engine power in grand prix 3 up to the 1600hp maximum that the game supported and laughting my ass with my friends with how ridiculously fast that thing was. Those mods back then made you feel like a hacker.
 
T
TomLehockySVK said:
I am confident in believing iRacing was full of fake marketing because looking at the early days of iRacing, it looks like a total joke ! It might be better now but how the hell did iRacing become popular when this was at release, and for many years after ?
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I though back then that iracing was going to crash into the ground because it was clearly a greedy money grab, and that people was not going to be that dumb as to pay every month for a game that was never going to be their property. Oh man how wrong I was, I also thought the same about adobe and about people not being so stupid as to purchase smartphones and graphics cards over 400€, lol. People never cease to surprise me.
 
S
Come onnnnnnnnnn. Look how bloody nice that Race 07 / Race Injection Nordschleife pic is.

I'm so glad we have PC gaming as opposed to consoles. Not only can we play our beloved old games still but we can play them in all sorts of enhanced ways we never could before. Ultra- and super ultra-widescreens, VR, high supersampling and downscaling (eg. Nvida DSR), HDR ouput (with the game using Special K or Win 11 auto-HDR) on HDR monitors, high framerates on high refresh rate (120 - 500 Hz) monitors, GSync/Freesync/VRR, etc.

Having a blast playing GTR1.
 
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Ryan Soucy
John B. Ellis said:
Burnout Paradise
Race Driver: Grid
GTR Evolution
iRacing
Honorable Mention: Euro Truck Simulator

Which one of the above titles adopted the most successful business model? Which one of those titles is still as relevant today--or even more relevant--than when it launched?
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Well, 3 of the titles are run by for-profit businesses while the other two are more Labors of love. Hat tip to ETS and ATS (which I play) who have passionate devs who, maybe out of necessity, still milk the same bones but stay afloat with DLC. As for iRacing, it is also a labor of love, if you will, by John Henry, who was comfortable bankrolling a loss making productduring startup. Lets be honest, how many commercial software products can be run in that manner. For EA, Codemasters and Tentacle it would have been impossible to justify huge losses for as many as five years while the initial investment gets recouped. The fact that no other company has approached a subscription model says to me that it is not the most attractive model, likely because of the J-shaped revenue curve. And at some point, these need to make money. The laws of economics don't bend for simracing, sadly. (Otherwise we'd all be playing Racing Legends by the West Brothers)
 
Helldriver
GTR Evolution was a really nice title. What a pity, that SimBin closed its doors.
The only video i ever uploaded to YT, was a lap on the Nordschleife filmed with a potatoe.
 
Zee33
Thought id add my 2cents . I know this topic is for the year 2008 , but theres a title that needs mention , EA Sports F1 Challenge 99-02. There was such an online communityfor the game , I feel that it and the communityadded to the games of 2008 games content . There was a mod "Champ car challenge" from idt . LMP and GT Endurance mods . Not many car mods like today , but the selection of tracks and skins available was incredible. I know this because i actually hosted files for the game . Then on came rFactor . Same deal , lots of tracks and then the availability of tons of cars . So my honest opinion is that EASports F1-2002 actually opened the door to all the racing games in 2008 after seeind what the modding community was doing of that era . As for iRacing , i feel that the Nascar Racing fame from EA contributed to that game. Again just my 2 cents .
 
R
Zee33 said:
Thought id add my 2cents . I know this topic is for the year 2008 , but theres a title that needs mention , EA Sports F1 Challenge 99-02. There was such an online communityfor the game , I feel that it and the communityadded to the games of 2008 games content . There was a mod "Champ car challenge" from idt . LMP and GT Endurance mods . Not many car mods like today , but the selection of tracks and skins available was incredible. I know this because i actually hosted files for the game . Then on came rFactor . Same deal , lots of tracks and then the availability of tons of cars . So my honest opinion is that EASports F1-2002 actually opened the door to all the racing games in 2008 after seeind what the modding community was doing of that era . As for iRacing , i feel that the Nascar Racing fame from EA contributed to that game. Again just my 2 cents .
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IDT Champcar Challenge was indeed an amazing mod, VLM Prototype C, Sports Car Challenge was my favorite (the engines sounds were awful though, few years ago I replaced all of them, except one car, and the game stop to work in windows 7 or 10... I've never been able to enjoy the mod with good sounds ; the mod has a specific exe file which doesn't work anymore with windows compatibility modes), and the most advanced one, the WGTS mod (which stayed quiet unknown as it came out around the same time than GTR1). And these were quiet complete experiences with several years of racing, it's been years we haven't seen such huge mods (i can only think about the F1 1975 mods for rfactor2 and AC). Racing with these mods, with many different cars was absolutely immersive.
 
Nitro McClean
Premium
2007 was the year my son asked "Dad can I have a racing game on the computer?" That became Toca Racedriver 3. Not on one computer, but on two computers. We raced against each other every day for about 10 years. Yes every day. In the end it was no longer sustainable. My son had become much faster than me. After Toca Racedriver 3, we tried Grid. That was not for us at all. Just for a short period EA Sports F1 2000 and then rFactor. We still have rFactor now and now also rFactor 2, Kart Sim Pro and Assetto Corsa. We tried the first Codemasters F1 in 2009 but paid no further attention to it. We only found it a bit acceptable in 2017 and since then we have the new edition every year, just because it's fun, not very good. We are no gamers, we don't try every possible racing game. We like what we have.
 
Nitro McClean
Premium
G_B said:
Iracing against F1 2008 and F1 2009 and F1 2010 and F1 2011 and F1 2012 and F1 2013 and F1 2014 and F1 2015 and F1 2016 and F1 2017 and F1 2018 and F1 2019 and F1 2020 and F1 2021 and F1 2022 and F1 2023

Find the error :roflmao:

Are there any players from this community who have been playing Iracing since 2008?

Is there a game time counter available since 2008? If so, how much time do you spend on it?

Or how much money did you spend on it?
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As far as I know there was no Codemasters F1 2008, the first was in 2009. And I think there was no official F1 2008 game at all.
 

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