Grand Prix 1 - 4 by Geoff Crammond

Discussions about hobbies, sports or anything else filling our lives time next to GeneRally.
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pressurewasherman
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 12:58 pm

Grand Prix 1 - 4 by Geoff Crammond

Post by pressurewasherman »

Anyone else used to love these games back in the 90s? I personally played a LOT, especially Grand Prix 2. I always wanted to do a hardcore season where I'd play with no saves, no re-starts, hardest difficulty, no driving assists, 100% races and with wheel and pedals. Never managed to pull it off it so I've felt I still have a score to settle with these games.

Last year I finally decided to do it - and in all four games! To prevent myself from cheating I decided to live-stream the races on YouTube so it forces me to put some more effort on it. It's been a lot of fun, but very difficult and unforgiving at the same time. Currently I'm done with Formula One Grand Prix (PLAYLIST) and currently in the middle of the 1994 season in Grand Prix 2 (PLAYLIST).

And yeah, it's very much possible to play these with a modern PC and racing wheel. Tutorials can be found on https://www.youtube.com/c/tedmeat
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RudyOosterndijk
Posts: 664
Joined: Sun Dec 27, 2009 4:56 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Grand Prix 1 - 4 by Geoff Crammond

Post by RudyOosterndijk »

Yes!
I owned all of Geoff Crammond's games but Grand Prix 2 and the overpriced add-on for Grand Prix 3. I fondly remember Grand Prix 2, though, as my best friend at the time used to play it quite a lot on his brand-new Windows 95 machine. A little later I found a cardbox with an unused version of Grand Prix 1 in our basement. But we never got it to run on our IBM-DOS computer.
So one year later I got me a friend who had just bought Formula 1 '97 for his PlayStation. Consider it sacrilege, but I did enjoy the PSX game quite a bit more due to controls and the infamous commentary by Heiko Waßer who I absolutely adored at the time. Speaking of sacrilege, I went on to beg my parents to get me my own PlayStation and Formula 1 '98 copy every Sunday in December 1998 on our way to church (yes, I did succeed in the end). :)

Anyway, I came back to Grand Prix 3 in 2000 because I wanted a proper racing sim to play with my new wheel. Unfortunately, licencing was always a year or so behind, which was a major turn-off for me. Believe it or not, FIFA games used to have an in-game editor and the graphics were bad enough to not bother about the kits as long as they were the right color. But Grand Prix 3 looked so much better. The liveries were spot-on (not the car shapes, though) and most of the sponsor decals were actually distinguishable.
All things considered, there was no other way for me but to switch back to PlayStation and F1 2000 when the wings of Michael Schumacher's Ferrari turned white and Gaston Mazzacane was given the second Minardi seat the same year.

Unfortunately for me, Sony discontinued their series of F1 games after the 2006 season and there were no officially licenced games until Codemasters' F1 2009 on PSP. Why am I telling you this? Because that's what got me back to GeneRally in the first place. Fechna's Formula 1 cars and the modding community for Grand Prix 4 were keeping me up-to-date with the real thing. At least until I lost interest for F1 games as I was lacking the hardware or console to play the latest iterations.

Wait! Modding, F1 and GeneRally - now I know what got me into PGR F1!
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