When it comes to NASCAR video games, I’m a simple man.
As someone born in 1991, I can’t really be too demanding.
My generation came of age with the original Papyrus NASCAR games on our Windows 95/98 personal computers, when the sacred texts were written.
This is when I could only properly play it and its sister IndyCar game and Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator with a joystick. It was not easy (which is why I probably spent untold hours laying waste to a pixelated San Francisco).
So comments like this one responding to a picture of William Byron playing iRacing’s upcoming NASCAR 25 console game make me want to take a long walk and contemplate life.
This used to be a proper country!
If some out there don’t realize that the default way of playing a racing game or simulator for a quarter of a century was with the Frankenstein Nintendo 64 controller (I’m not sure even half the buttons actually did anything) or a PlayStation/Xbox controller, then we are failing our youth.
However, a new age is upon us. After a couple years of dormancy, NASCAR will once again be returning to video game consoles around the world.
It’s too late for iRacing to take any notes from me, so this week I’m providing a few humble suggestions of things I would like to see in future NASCAR video games it produces.
“Flirtin’ With Disaster”
Every generation of NASCAR gamer has their game and that one song that was iconic and now can’t help but associate it with ripping digital laps at Bristol Motor Speedway.
For us ’90s kids, that song was Molly Hatchet’s “Flirtin’ With Disaster.”
This was the tune that greeted us anytime we fired up NASCAR 98.
Dear iRacing, please bring this back. It’s an auto racing anthem and the children need to experience it. Think of the children!
The Intimidator Button
While there’s essentially a cult that’s formed around NASCAR Racing 2003, I worship at the altar of the game that came two years later, EA Sports’ 2005 edition.
I could wax poetic about this game’s intro level, where you race Ryan Newman through the streets of a nameless city in street cars and earn your first racing contract.
But I’m going to talk about the Intimidator button.
Chase for the Cup had a really cool and simple feature that allowed you to make allies and rivals. If you were driving behind another car, you could press the right trigger — if my memory is correct — and choose to draft with the car. This made you both go faster and you gained positive reputation with that driver.
Or … you could Intimidate them. This was the other trigger.
Instead of drafting with the car out front, you could get them loose, which allowed you to get underneath and pass. And sometimes, you wrecked them.
Of course, this would gain you a negative reputation and you’d likely get a post-race cutscene of your driver in an argument with your victimized rival.
Fifteen years later, a car in front of you was like a paperweight.
Hopefully, the racing physics of the new iRacing game will be so good that the Intimidator button doesn’t need to be brought out of moth balls. But it would still be fun.
Lost Speedways
When NASCAR 25 is released this fall, I would be shocked if there were active NASCAR tracks that are not included in it.
What would be even better than having the full roster of tracks that are currently on the schedule?
How about tracks that no longer exist? Or older versions of current tracks?
It would be insanely cool to turn laps on a Daytona International Speedway from yesteryear, like from the 1980s or the version of the track before it was renovated in the mid-2010s.
Better yet, how about EchoPark Speedway and Darlington Raceway before they were revamped in 1997? Pre-concrete Dover Motor Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway. Martinsville Speedway when it had two pit roads.
Or even the defunct Riverside International Raceway?
Now, I know iRacing is able to make its track designs based on scans of the actual track surface. I don’t need a perfect recreation of Riverside or any potential old track that could be raised from the dead like North Wilkesboro Speedway was.
I strictly want these tracks for the vibes.
Also, iRacing has scans of Cup cars from the 1980s and 2000s that are used on its simulator product.
I truly hope that those are something console gamers will be able to use in NASCAR 25, if not NASCAR 26.
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.