NASCAR 2001

"Best racer on the PSX?"

This installment of the NASCAR franchise was probably one of the best of EA's. EA as a sports company tends to be pretty lazy with their lesser known franchises such as NASCAR and March Madness, but this is one of the instances where they actually did a very good job utilizing their license with NASCAR. This was also the very first game made by EA to have Daytona International Speedway in it, which is home to the Super Bowl of NASCAR.

The game itself is very fun to play. The control of the cars is much improved over 2000's. It is a fine mix of a sim and an arcade game with it being tough to control the car in the turns but it doesn't destroy your car if you scratch the wall. The difficulties in the game are very different between each other. For example, on the easiest mode you won't have any trouble going from the back to the front, yet on the toughest difficulty you will find that the computer A.I. will block you, form packs, and generally do nearly anything in their power to keep you from getting to the front.

The visuals in NASCAR 2001 are great for the Playstation. Each of the cars has paint schemes that look very similar to what they actually look like in real life. Each of the courses look very similar to their real life counterparts, even to the point to where you can tell certain courses have more banking in the corners than others. A cool minor detail is that when you rub your car up against the wall you can see tire marks on the wall when you drive by it on your next lap.

The sound of the game is actually very well done as well, except for the announce team. The roar of the engines makes it sound like you're in an actual race. There are the screech of tires when you're spinning out, which is a nice detail. The announce team on the game is pretty horrendous though. You have the choice of either listening to an announce team while you race, or game supplied music. There's nothing wrong with the music in the game, it's just not my type (mix of country and not very good rock music.) The announce team will make such great statements as “Dale Earnhardt is now in the top five” when you might actually be in 12th and three laps down. He doesn't say very different things and sounds very monotone in the way he says the statements. The announce team makes your pit crew look like Einstein by saying things such as, “You should pit” or “You need to get going” which are actually accurate unlike what the announce crew may say.

The controls of the game are the standard racing game controls. X is to accelerate, Square to brake. There are other things you can do with the controls such as toggle your rear view mirror off and on or change your car view or shift if you have it set to a manual transmission, but the standard racing controls work great for NASCAR 2001.

This game is one that you actually might want to play during a retro gaming marathon due to it being easy to pick up and play; even though it doesn't really qualify as retro. It's definitely the best racer of the Playstation, and has definite replay value. The in-game stat tracking keeps track of a ton of things varying from wins to top 10s to average speed. The A.I. is actually pretty smart for a PSX racer, which is something that not many games could claim. For a cheap price it's definitely worth a buy if you're just looking for a quick pick up and go racer.

Key points:
+ Daytona
+ Graphics
+ Controls
+ Fun
- Announcers

FINAL SCORE: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/01, Updated 10/10/05