Community Question | How Long Have You Been A Sim Racer?

[Ville Niklas]

Since F1 Spirit from Konami on the MSX back in ..... 1987!

In my opinion not a sim but mother of all racing games with all features it had. Career mode, pitstops, fuel consumption etc. Glad that i still have my game module

 

[bsmooth]

Lets see when I graduated High school, the biggest thing my friend did on the Computer we had at school was print out a picture of his dream car, and of course an image of the starship Enterprise.
If I recall the only thing that computer had was toggle switches, and no screen of course.
But my first racing game was on the Atari 800 was Pole position, the Great american Cross contry road race, and Stunt car racer was a blast too.

 

[pitkin]

I'm probably around 40 years plus if we take the really old stuff like the Atari VCS into consideration.

I had a lot of fun playing the Pole Position and Night driver type games on the Atari. I followed that with a C64. Pitstop 2 was a highlight of that time. My friend and I used to take the roles of F1 drivers and do head to head challenges, it was great fun trying to block each other from making a pitstop when it was time to refuel.

One day at school a kid bought a game in called Revs. WOW! what a game, it felt so real. I got it for the c64 and used I to run 16 races at Silverstone to simulate an F1 championship, carefully writing down all the results to keep track of it. A friend had a BBC computer at home and I always tried to get him to fire up his version of the game as it ran faster than the c64 version.

Then it was time for an Amiga. Grand Prix Circuit was an early favourite until Indianapoliis 500 & F1GP blew away everything else I'd played before.

Some time in 1992-1993 I saw a TV spot for Indycar Racing by Papyrus. No Amiga version sadly, but luckily I had a job by then. I was so wowed by the graphics I just had to buy a PC so I could play it. My investment, though expensive rewarded me with fantastic games in the Indycar series and Geoff Crammonds games.

Many PC's and a VR headset later, I'm where I am now. My latest purchase, AMS2, sits on my HDD along with rF2, ACC, AC, AMS1 and Raceroom. All great sims, and I have a lot a fun with them all.

It's amazing looking back. I remember looking at the loading screen to Revs on the c64 and wishing the graphics in game looked like that. That 14 year old version of myself had no idea things could this good. Sadly I probably won't be around driving sims in another 40 years time, but looking at where I started to where we are now, I know you younguns are going to experiencing some absolutely jaw dropping stuff in the future.

Here's to many happy years racing in the future and a big thanks to all those who gave me such great games to play in the past.

 

[felan]

started 1993 (?) with ICR1, ICR2, GP2...online since 1998 with GPL

 

[Vasilis Katerinakis]

My god 60% of people have been simracing for 15+ years.
Personally my experience with simracing started with Pcars 1 on the Xbox One and RF1 on a crappy laptop all the way back in summer of 2016. After that it was Xmas of that same year where i got a new pc and a copy of rf2 and ever since may or may not have spent 2k+ hours on it...

 

[BrettSinclair1]

GTR Evolution back in 2010.

 

[daveclifton]

At lot of claims beyond the nineties, but there was no simracing before F1GP and Papyrus Indy 500. Anything before this is games.

 

[looka]

Grand Prix Circuit some 30yrs+ ago.... Damn I'm old.

 

[Andor]

My first pc game is GTR and later GTL. I will never forget!

 

[jfeelders]

If I don't count the 1998 Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit and the 2000 Porsche Unleashed (which were arcade-games), it started with Live for Speed S1 in 2003. After an interval, I'm back at Assetto Corsa with a full rig and VR.

 

[skylineforever]

first pc game : GTR2 and live for speed in 2005
First console game : Super Monaco Gp 2

 

[thepharcyde]

Spectrum 128k Crazy Cars

https://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/395025-crazy-cars-zx-spectrum-front-cover.jpg

 

[Daemon04]

started around 2007 or 2008-ish with f1 challenge 99-02 with the saitek r220 and that has evolved into gtr2 with the "bierbuden" and a logitech momo racingforce.

then it was assetto corsa with the g27 and finally using a g29 with a simlab-gt1 evo.

 

[lukester1975]

At lot of claims beyond the nineties, but there was no simracing before F1GP and Papyrus Indy 500. Anything before this is games.

REVS was no game! I hacked around with some virtual joysticks recently and got it running on current hardware. Still feels great once the brain has readjusted to the (lack of) frame rate. In fact, it feels better than when I played it with a Voltmace analogue joystick... Better than PC2 anyway

 

[Nick Hill]

Oh, wow, really interesting poll results. I'm not the only old fart around here after all, I guess!

My first real sim experience was in the early 90's with Indianapolis 500: The Simulation. I dabbled with a couple different cheapo wheels on the PlayStation over the years, but I really only caught the bug in a serious way circa 2012 (so I put myself in the 8-10 yrs category, but I think I could spin a case for the 15+ category if I wanted to).

 

[Alexandre]

I only understood a true difference between a racing game and a sim race game after I got my G27 back in 2012 with rfactor CD that it brings along, but if I consider experience Gran Turismo with a joystick the start of this feeling, then more than 15 for sure.

 

[Steve Bird]

Started on the ZX81 with pole position in the mid 80's. Moving on to Spectrum with Pole Position and then onto CBM64 (Revs...OMG). Then onto the Amiga 500 with Geoff Crammond's Formula One. Stayed with Amiga for a few years until I got a pentium 75 and then GP2 came along. I was serving with the UK Forces out in Germany at the time and bought GP2 in Dutch in Roermond (Nederlands). Loved it to bits. Bought GP3 (still playing on joystick) and GP4 where I eventually bought a crap 1st gen Steering wheel and pedals in 2003 ish. However, crap as it may be it was a game changer. Still here today and love the changes I've seen throughout the years with both sim releases and hardware, although my pocket and the wife hasn't. My eldest son, born in 1994, has also grown up to be a cracking sim racer and we enjoy many a weekend competing in iRacing Endurance events even though we are 200 miles apart now.

 

[David Mann]

Haha, I got started with the game featured in the title image, like a few others here I see (Indy 500). You could change your setup in real time, and I remember a friend and I changing the gear ratios as we drove down the straight to see how fast we could get the car to go. I really got into sim racing starting with GT and GT2. After I got my first wheel/pedal set several years ago, it was a bit of GT4 and then PC sims.

 

[Dave Thayer]

My Sim racing years started with Papyrus Nascar 1 and 2 and Indycar 2. From there went to Nascar 2003 and several years of online league racing. Also did GPL a little bit during that time. And today I still have Nascar 2003 and GPL and installed on Windows 10 and working. Sim Racing quality has come a long way far as improved graphics, Driving capabilities and VR.

Note: these were the good years we had all the games on DVD's to install and run. Now days the games are controlled by a big venues like STEAM and they control the operations of the games. Different times for gaming.
take care.

 

[Durge Driven]

Indy 500, brought Joystick, Sound Blaster 8 bit and headphones just for it, so well and truly committed by then