Formula 1's Greatest Gaming Series : Grand Prix Retrospective and Grand Prix 4 Review

We need GP5 to save us. GP4 is a 20 year old game with a 10-15 year old foundation even that feels like it's 20 years from the future based on today's games.
Geoff Crammond interview from several few years ago
www.grandprixgames.org/read.p...
GP3 on Dreamcast article
www.unracedf1.com/grand-prix-...
GP4 on Xbox article
www.unracedf1.com/grand-prix-...
/ emptybox_007

[@steelin666]

What blows my mind the most is that this game has Fernando Alonso. Just like the latest F1 game from Codies has Fernando Alonso. And the one that will be released later this year, it also will have Fernando Alonso. For gaming and simracing, this is several eras apart, but for Formula 1 - it's just Fernando's career.

[@PointNemo9]

Alonso debuted in F1 in 2001, not at all surprising he is in the game.

[@DJ.V-W]

@@PointNemo9 I think that was @steelin666's point

[@deadbeef576]

@@PointNemo9 2001 was 22 years ago

[@TacticalCardboard]

Also Kimi Raikkonen! Two young bucks that surely would go on to have illustrious careers...

[@peperonikiller]

Actually crazy to think about how long he's had a career in F1, just goes to show how good he is, and even so far this season you're seeing how he's still on top of his game. He's really made me a fan this last year. The dude has drive.

[@andi36356]

The coolest thing about the car failures in GP4 I've never seen in any other game are non fatal failures. There's some extremely rare electric failures like individual shift lights getting stuck on/off or the wheel display screen freezing. Meanwhile the current gen of sims are just now getting to reintroducing the basic mechanical failures again.

[@Burl_Hurlbutt]

I had a random turbo failure in AMS2 which didn't break the car, I just had a good bit less acceleration and power. Was pretty cool, but I do wish the electronics could glitch out sometimes like you mentioned, that'd be pretty cool.

[@MrJohansen]

in NR2003 (the predecessor to iracing) you can lose a gear if you shift without lifting and without using the clutch. I always liked that because it actually makes you take care of the car

[@MrMW2nd]

In nascar dirt to daytona you can randomly get debris on the grille or brake failure or power steering failure

[@TacticalCardboard]

Whenever I've had the shift light failures I always wrote it off on this game being buggy. lol

[@andi36356]

@@TacticalCardboard ngl I've had the same reaction but even if it really wasn't intended, it's the textbook example of the bug that's actually a feature

[@JamesHanniganComposer]

I have fond memories writing the menu music tracks for this game!

[@calliballs]

Awesome.. I'm a massive fan of yours. Love your Harry Potter and Command and Conquer music.

[@KayoMichiels]

One big topic you forgot: weather! You could have a race start in the pooring rain and it could become bonedry in the middle of the race, with even a chance of a downpour at the end of a race! Dry racing lines where you have to keep driving in with slicks because if you go out of them... Bambi On Ice!

[@west-tekesportsracing4239]

And it could rain on only parts of the track while the other half remains dry. Something the current F1 games still can't achieve

[@KayoMichiels]

@@west-tekesportsracing4239 Spa.. seriously! One part stone dry, the other soaking wet!

[@bigfella6629]

GP3 was my first F1 game on PC and I drove the crap out of it, happy times.

[@cipriandumitrache9340]

Definitively do a video on GP2 also! I remember getting GP2 around 1997 and it blew my mind! It was so much ahead of the others! GP4 was an amazing evolution but GP2 was a REVOLUTION! I'm thinking of installing it again and doing some racing. I really like setting up a world championship at 100% distance doing a hardcore season but in Assetto Corsa and AMS2 it's very hard to have decent racing over long distance. The AIs will do something stupid guaranteed and will ruin the race! GP2 had such capable AIs, there was a script, there were mechanical faults, AI mistakes, different pit stop strategies... OMG, it was so much better than anything we have today. Of course GP4 was even better but somehow, of the entire series, GP2 is the one that sticks to mind most!

[@MichaelR82]

Yes! GP2 is the masterpiece. The races are really hard and immersive particularly with a modern steering wheel.

[@ASIceman]

The best AI races I have ever had was in GP4. Imagine what we could have had today if the development of racing games had kept this trajectory. I want to play GP4, now so I hope I can make it run on “modern” hardware.

[@Norse1957]

GP2 was what had me and all my engineering buddies going crazy trying to figure out how to design & build our own home made wheel and pedal systems. And when GP3 came out, we were even more stoked. And then when GP4 was released, we were amazed by the rain effects graphics in GP4... it was crazy how so far ahead of it's time it was... So I'm surprised you didn't really mention weather effects.

[@paulipetas]

Ohh, some much nostalgia. I think the biggest thing with Grand Prix 3 was that it was the first game to have a dynamic weather. I remember reading a game magazine where the reviewer raved about the weather feature. He was blown away about the fact that you could cool your tires, going off the racing line if the wet track was drying up! Ath the time. it must have been revolutionary to have something like that in a racing game.

[@h3llr4iser1]

You nailed it - no matter how "realistic" the driving model is, if the racing part is not there, it's all a moot effort. It's not a "racing sim", it's an hotlapping sim. Another thing that is 100% on point is how aggressive GP4 allowed you to drive, which becomes even more evident when compared to some modern games/sims that are little more than "driving on soap simulators". The one and only modern title I tried that comes close to that is AMS 2.

[@Skumtomten1]

Absolutely true, and one reason I still play GTR 2 with mods to this day. That game also managed to capture that feeling of being in the race and all it's aspects. I have obviously never driven an F1 car but I would think these cars are very stable and easy to drive overall. The on-rails feeling would make more sense compared to the soup feeling if you ask me, but im not expert for sure.

[@RaceSimCentral]

Your points at the end about racing, that's something the guys and I just discussed on a podcast: Roleplaying. I grew up racing Geoff's sims, modifying the AI each race to get accurate results, but also putting myself into the event. If I crashed big I might make myself miss the next race... Every sim these days does fail to capture that little something that is YOU IN THE RACE. Yep yep yep.

[@mr.fister4738]

While on the topic of roleplaying I'm currently roleplaying an F1 career. I started in 2001 with Benetton and am currently in the 2002 season with Renault. If I have a bad year or two with bad results, I will put myself in a car further down the grid. If I do well I stay with the team or switch to another, mabye even better one. An imaginary contract system if you want to call it that. Combining that with the already immersive experience of GP4 and being able to drive most F1 season with accurate perfomances, it's the only F1 game where I can do this. No other racing sim comes even close to what kind of roleplaying I can do with GP4 and the content that the community provides. For that, GP4 is in my opinion the best racing sim out there at the moment and I absolutely love it. I'll most likely get hundreds if not thousands of hours of fun outta this game before I get bored. It's simply not replaceable at the moment

[@Skumtomten1]

Yea, a big reason as to why I still enjoy playing GTR 2, the power and glory mod in particular. That game also really managed to capture that feeling, that you are in a race, which modern games really fails to do despite their advanced physics models and all. GTR 2 has amazing mods such as Championship manager which allows you to do full custom Championships where you select cars,tracks, even classes with weight penalties if you want and also exactly how the points are distributed after each race. You can even to races with double points. These Championships then appear in-game for you to enjoy, and it's a blast. The AI produces really fun racing overall and doing a long race with a large grid with many points at stake is such a fun feeling that I simply don't get with modern sims.

[@Heldermaior]

GP4 was this amazing game where you could blow your engine up for running for too long on dirty air. Heck you could lose performance by doing that for too long and only warning you got was that you couldn't reach the same top speed in a straight and car felt sluggish accelerating out of the corners. No current game does that. AMS 2 is introducing that slowly but this feature of engine fatigue is nowhere to be found.

[@jrrs8692]

But there is engine wear in AMS2, its just more pronounced on older, less reliable cars. I've had engine misfires, coolant leaks and turbo failures in AMS2. Its the closest of the current sims to GP4, they just need to dial the AI so they spread more and dont stay in packs.

[@precesionnoreaster1507]

​@@jrrs8692 I think ams2 is on track to being a fantastic sim

[@Heldermaior]

@@jrrs8692 good to know. Haven't played it (or any sim racing title) in ages.

[@6665hitm4k3r]

Actually all rFactor based sims have this feature. I remember from the early FSR days in rF2 how people struggled with the brakes at Montreal as they set the brake duct blankings too extreme and suffered brake fading. I think quite often it get's overlooked what modern sims are offering when we look at those old sims with rose tinted glasses due to the fact, that the average attention span of sim racers has moved from a full race distance to 3 laps and being first in T1. And it's actually very obvious when you take a look of what is popular. AC is the most popular racing sim while being the worst racing sim. We don't get that far that we suffer brake fading or blowing engines as we don't drive long enough and not in an environment that is competetive enough to demand agressive radiator settings (something that AC doesn't even offer). But once people actually realize that there is a fireball or a bit of smoke coming out of their car they think it's a bug. The bad thing is that sim racing has moved so far away from actually being a full racing experience, that going back to such old features requires huge marketing and technical efforts. There is a huge list of features that has been removed over time and barely found their way back into newer titles. All modern titles getting rid of pitlane colission is a fantastic example for this.

[@evilwilk]

The failures add a whole layer of depth to racing that simracers overlook. In my league, the physics i create have random failures on, and it makes races a lot more interesting, because you never know whats going to happen, and makes drivers who take care of the equipment actually have an edge. And yes, i was inspired by this awesome game.

[@mr.fister4738]

The races I had in this game were phenomenal. For example: Magny-Cours in 2001. The race started in the wet. A dry line formed and stayed for like 10 laps. Then it rained again for ~7 laps and the dry line vanished. It stopped raining and a dry lined formed again. This went on for the entire race and it was fucking great

[@And-War]

GP 1 and GP 2 were what got me into racing games, I played the hell out of this game

[@Maartwo]

As a long time viewer, I gotta say that I really love the switch in your video's content. I'm a big fan of gaming retrospectives and I feel like videos like these are what's missing in the simracing/arcade racing games youtube genre. The Grand Prix series are a pending assignment for me and I hope to try them whenever I decide to finish my backlog. It's depressing to see these old games are more advanced or complex than what we have nowadays in terms of gameplay.

[@eclap78]

Oh stop it, I'm so glad I caught this just after you uploaded this. 5 minutes after the upload!!! I started sim racing on my Amiga 600 back in the early 1990s. F1GP. Keyboard. It was amazing! Then I got a PC and GP2 and so it followed. GP4 was a masterpiece. Thank you for this video mate, really brought back the memories, even though I'm only two minutes into it. Love ya.

[@SpeedIng80]

Hey buddy, same here ;-) . In 1996 I got my first PC after the A600, first PC games were GP2 and Need For Speed Special Edition. I love both until today!

[@OliNorwell]

GP2 - what a game! I literally spent months of my childhood playing it.

[@strathcarnagelackadaisical9597]

Great video I really enjoyed that look back on a game I've played for hours on end! I do think you were pretty harsh on GP3, that was a very tricky game to get right and very rewarding when you did. It certainly didn't have the problem GP4 has of feeling like it's on rails. GP4 suffered from a lack of attention to detail from the developers in peripheral things like the UI, marshal and pit crew animation which the earlier games didn't, though the gfx engine Infogrames developed around Crammond's physics engine still stands up to scrutiny today. As you say, the effort that has gone into the game to keep it alive as a modding platform is astonishing, and a testament to the passion and devotion Crammond's games inspire.

[@AdmV0rl0n]

whatever anyone may raise in terms of limitation - this game - remains a legend. It had as you say a weird thing where the cars were somewhat on rails. That is true. But we had a guy in our guest room, and all I can say is we ran an in house championship - gooood times.

[@ADX77]

I played the pants of GP2... I always liked the crash physics, wheel touch physics, the way the cars looked like they were on the track, etc. all those little details like the marshals and crane...they made a difference. I always wanted papyrus to go that little extra, but they never did.

[@ACatCalledSnow]

Thank you so much for this Emptybox. I grew up on this series from the beginning on the Amiga and loved it. I really hope we get a GP5. I was sad it never came out on the Dreamcast or Xbox. The PC I had at the time couldn't do these games justice. Some fun facts: A consultant on GP1 was Paddy Lowe who is still in Formula One and has worked with many top teams. The legendary Sir Lewis Hamilton said in an interview that he grew up playing GP2. And yes, please do a GP2 video. Keep up the great work.

[@LN_997]

One thing about it that makes me nostalgic is seeing the tricolour on your pit board, I miss having an Irish driver and Irish team on the grid.

[@oortcloud210]

I've been a racing and racing game fan all my life and spent hours playing Revs on my BBC with my brother. I even sector-edited the disk to change all the names to real drivers. Then F1 GP came along - I had an Atari ST at the time and it's difficult to describe how much better it was than anything that had come before. All the tracks, all the cars, all the drivers (it was easy to edit it to get the real driver names in there and it was very obvious from the car colours and driver names who was who), all wrapped up in an amazingly complete package with full seasons , qualifying etc and a simulation model which for its time felt amazing. Every F1 game that GC produced was a masterpiece given the hardware of the time. For me, the most disappointing was GP4. It was plagued with bugs and issues and was hurried across the line. I think the development issues may be why GC stopped at that point, but I could be wrong.

[@Grus0]

Dude, you came up in my recs and I love this video. I've had a boxed copy of GP4 on my shelf for years - bought mostly because of GP1 nostalgia but never actually played. I'm inspired to fire it up now.

[@davidporeilly1]

Thank you for your great work. Another Microprose sim "Falcon 4" an F16 fighter simulation had some lifecycle similarities. Its still played and heavily modded to day and still awesome. (No Fernando Alonso though).

[@TacticalCardboard]

Simulation gaming wouldn't be what it is today if it wasn't for Microprose.

[@scottgray92]

Thanks for the nostalgia trip! I was pretty young when I got GP4 (after seeing it on the shelf in the shops and begging my mum over many visits). I only ever played it with a keyboard but I absolutely adored for many of the reasons you highlighted. I’m sure this game has a huge role to play in my life long love of F1 and sim racing.

[@GodlessGrandpa]

Thanks for the nostalgia trip. Geoff Crammonds GP will always bring back good memories for me. I can still remember clearly where I purchased the first one for my Amiga on release. I was blown away when I played it.

[@MrNangu]

Great video, thanks for that. GP2 introduced me on racing games, and I didn't stop since then. Grand Prix 4 was for me a masterpiece, even with all the faults. Never existed a better F1 racing game after it, sadly. One think you forgot to mention on your video is GP4's replay system. You can watch the entire race from the cockpit cameras, or the TV perspective. There was an option which let you watch where the action was in the race, where the replay system automatically switch to the camera on the circuit where the racing battles were happening, accidents, cars quitting with mechanical failures, etc. Brilliant for the time, and never surpassed. You could use GPxPatch to inject graphics overlay exactly as shown in the TV broadcasts of that era also. It's incredible and sad I'm still waiting for a F1 game which can immerse me in a F1 race like GP4 did, and still does, after all those years. Now we have racing sims with incredible graphics, extremely complex physics calculations, but the feeling to be there racing with the best F1 drivers, was never achieved like GP4. We have the best possible simulations right now, we need someone to put a GP4 like "racing game" on top of that.

[@karlsamson1765]

I grew up playing both Stunt Car Racer (which was ENORMOUS fun) and the initial Grand Prix. Was just incredible for a 9 or 10 year old at the time to be able to race what seemed like proper F1 with all those little details like the crane lifting the car up over the fence. Also, in the original game, you had the option to have all cars the same (like you said with Ferrari the same as Minardi) or you could have 1991 levels, so the pretend McLaren/Williams cars were the quick ones. I was always Robert Davies (Nigel Mansell) as I wanted to beat Carlos Sanchez (Ayrton Senna) and always had the 1991 pace option chosen so as championship battles were like the real thing. Thank you for this video, great to relive those experiences

[@TacticalCardboard]

GP4 (and others AFAIK) have the year specific performance levels option, but it doesn't really do anything for the player car physics wise, it's more so an AI thing.

[@Throwaway-hj2rr]

Thanks for bringing this one up! I have started sim racing nearly 10 years after the release of this one so I missed out. Online discussions mostly focus on GP Legends so I wasn't aware of what I was missing out on. Full single player, interesting races that play out different depending on the script and solid AI is exactly what I want to experience after what feels like the same idea being done for the nth time when it comes to modern sim racers.

[@GPRaceF1]

Grand Prix 4 still a live. I play every day in my channel and update for 2023 :) Nice Video, thanks!

[@MaFd0n]

bro all i can tell you that as a gamer in 1996 GP2 was da bomb. In its genre it laterally blew away the competition for years. Graphics-wise the game was impeccable compared to even the big releases of Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Tomb Raider and C&C Red Alert.

[@jmurkz]

Thank you EB, played and loved them all, I was lucky enough to be there from the start and enjoyed them as they released.

[@limatwofive8951]

Grand Prix 2, 3 and 4 were all masterclasses in F1 racing sims. Never ever has anybody come close to this..

[@muulka]

So I work for Williams F1, and my old manager has been there since waaaay back in the 90s. He sometimes will talk about how Geoff Crammond used his knowledge (he’s been involved in real F1 simulation since the very beginning) to help develop these games!

[@GeoffSeeley]

I was a big Geoff Crammond fan back in the day. If I saw his name on the box, I knew it would be good. I think I still have a NIB copy of GP4 and played everything since Revs. Now I need to fire this up again :-) Thanks!

[@dathyr1]

Thanks for the video Empty Box. I have both GP2 and GP4 and can't remember which system I have it installed on. I have both Windows 10 and Windows 7. They were both great games at the time. A game you didn't mention was Grand Prix Legends by the same developer. This is a very challenging, tough game to race on. The F1 cars had no aero dynamics and narrow tires so you had to learn how to drift the vehicles into each corner. Not part of Formula F1 games, my friend and myself would race Papyrus Indycar 2 via modem connections. It was only a 2 player game. So it was both of us against all the AI Indycars. They never came out with multiplayer for Indycar 2. Then we all know about all the Papyrus Nascar games and the start of multiplayer by Sierra. I spent many hours on end on the free Sierra servers till IRacing came along and we now have to pay for the services which I did not join. i think there are still private groups today that Race the last great Nascar game by Papyrus and have their own servers. i have all these old games and some will run on the modern computers. I think most work well on Windows 7 systems. These are the games that kicked off Sim Racing to what we enjoy and have now.

[@KayoMichiels]

Geoff Crammond didn't make Grand Prix Legends, that was Papyrus..

[@evanovski]

Failed first year computer science at university because of GP2...... Great memories

[@SimUKReviews]

Two things I love: That Bennetton. Alsono! Stunt car 4acer was epic.

[@th3orist]

i remember vividly playing the shit out of Grand Prix 1 and 2 in the 90s, these games were so much ahead of their time, same goes for Indycar Racing 1 and 2.

[@ZedNinetySix_]

Would love more GP4 content from you, this video was epic

[@SpeedIng80]

Wow, thank you very much for expressing exactly my optinion about Geoff Crammond's GP series and adding many details I haven't known yet! I started playing F1GP on my Amiga in 1993 and from then I was addicted. There was a guy called Steven Broadbent who had developed an Editor where you could change lot of settings, so I created 94, 95, and later 96 seasons. I think that was in 95 or 96 ... Back then nearly nobody I knew was connected to the internet, so you had to order via mail or phone. I remember annoying Steven from time to time by phone, asking for a new version with new features... looking back today that was very funny :-) Great times!

[@ACatCalledSnow]

Was this the GPEdit program? If so, thank you to you both

[@SpeedIng80]

@@ACatCalledSnow No need to thank me, I was only a customer ;-) I have googled his name but didn't find anything related, so maybe he wasn't the developer but some kind of distributor. Or maybe his editor just didn't get that famous.

[@ACatCalledSnow]

@@SpeedIng80 You took the time to create the seasons. So thank you for that. I really loved the F1GP series.

[@SpeedIng80]

@@ACatCalledSnow yeah, but only for my own use, because it was around 1995 and I didn‘t have an internet connection ;-) . In fact I have published some minor content for GP2: Do you remember (respectively encounter) that Bellini 1996 AddOn? It was pure crap, so I added some road textures with white lines for the Melbourne circuit and some palms around the track. That gave this track at least a little Melbourne-feeling…

[@ACatCalledSnow]

@@SpeedIng80 I remember using GPEdit on the Amiga to update the season data. Good times.

[@JB-ep2ei]

GP2 was my first F1 game, i think it was 1996, the internet was still pretty young and mods started coming out where you could download updated liveries and change the variables to replicate the current F1 season it was quite a magical time. Atlast I struggled with cpu occupancy and race starts were always slide shows....cough Monaco but I truely enjoyed the racing. Also, Papyrus Indycar was fun too. Wish we had todays wheels back than but my Madcatz and Thrustmaster swerved me well.

[@jonathanschungel5219]

I think it is the best F1 Game ever made. Yes today's games have better graphics, physics, etc., but i think the package of GP4 as a whole is unmatched to this day.

[@marcelwil2530]

Great video tx, I am still playing GP4 with CSM to manage mods. Greetings from Holland

[@johnedwards230]

GP2 was amazing, spent hours modifying tracks, wasted youth!! GP4 still holds up. Looks great still!

[@joeadgie4188]

You got me into iRacing in 2014 and you've sold me on Grand Prix 4.

[@JamieAtSLC]

I played sooo much Grand Prix 2 as a kid.

[@Flaux1]

Thank you for the video! With all the extra stuff in the comments you could do a follow up video showing the pit animations, gpedia, weather, the live-jumbotrons, maybe you still have a gp2 manual which always stuns people with the amount of intel...

[@Flaux1]

Also the fact that wheel to wheel contacts are realistic isn't usual nowadays

[@mrbismarck]

I used to go over to a friend's at weekends and we'd run 100% length races on GC GP, using the hotseat feature where you raced a set number of laps and then the AI would take over your car and your friend would race their car.

[@brianlabode4415]

Oh boy r u taking me back o what ??? Started off with Revs using an analog joy stick, GP1,GP2,GP3 & GP4. Use to racing in a league with the seed & weather where u could do the race from start to finish as many times as u wanted & upload ur race & the race results would get posted. Just Loved the Games ❤ In mu 60’s now so don’t remember the leagues I ran in ? Does anyone remember racing like this ? Must search online & see if I can this find this game in abandoned ware 😊😊😊😊😊

[@1teamski]

I was obsessed with World Circuit on the Amiga and spent hours on that thing. What a revolution in driving sims!!!

[@glo1068]

Spent so many wonderful hours on the Amiga 500 with Stunt Car Racer. Many beautiful memories with GP2 as well with my first wheel for the pc the Thrustmaster T2

[@njknpc9459]

im not a big simracer, but i have fond memories about gp4. The one thing, i miss from all the modern games is hotseat mode. Gp4 allowed for a bunch of friends participate in a season where you drive x amount of lap and then it switches to the next player. Oh the drama we used to have :) I remember I won in Silverstone with the BAR Honda, and one of my friend said at the end of the season ,that race cost him is world champion title :D

[@Hesitatedeye]

I had the original 4 and I loved Grand Prix Manager 1 & 2 we need those back like yesterday.

[@Rohrkrepierer]

Grand Prix 4 was the BEST F1 game ever made. Case closed.

[@SuperGazelle_]

F1 Challenge '99-'02 takes it for me, but it's very close between the two. A great era for F1 sims for sure.

[@sneekeruk]

I had Revs +4 tracks as a 9 year old, as the original came with just Silverstone, and this got Donnington, Oulton park, Snetterton and brands hatch too. I put many, many hours into it. F1gp on the amiga, the sequel and 4 all got played a lot, but whilst seeing the box I remember buying gp3, but I cant remember playing it much.

[@foundedinbucks]

GP3 was my first foray into sim racing and tbh I think it still holds up today. It had telemetry as standard, a brilliant manual you could get stuck into, and the AI would actually respond to on-track events like dynamic weather, pitting realistically etc - something that still isnt done right today! Physics werent brilliant but pretty good for their time. Also great menu music

[@foxtochopkun4438]

How did you get those car wheel graphics?? And the overlays? Looks amazing! What do I have to do for it to look as smooth? Which mods do I have to install? Thank you for this video, inspired me to play it!

[@jacekatalakis8316]

Came back here to post that it was said that Jacques Villeneuve, yes that one, played a ton of GP2 as wel and credited it at one point with helping him learn Monaco It was said down there but I feel like actually having semi fictional or wink wink nudge nudge driver lists (we all knew who Carlos Sanchez was supposed to be and the manual had the full team names, glorious cigarette names too), but I feel like a strength of F1GP/WC that gets overlooked or the ability to put your name in, is roleplaying/immersion, something I'd argue that GP2-4 struggled a bit with since it is the same helmet, just a different name due to licensing. To me being able to change up the names in F1GP and having the early 90s limitations on textures, shading and graphics makes it a lot more immersive when you are wheel to wheel with Carlos Sanchez and battling for a win, then you can change up the name and head canon it that Sanchez got the boot from the team for someone younger or quicker, rather than seeing the same helmet down to the nth detail On that note, said it on another vid the other day but GP2 was a strange mix of bits of the 94 season. Obviously, with Senna having his own licensing deals, he would not likely have made it in either way, but I'm curious if it was Geoff himself, or someone else at the team who made the decision to skip out on the post Imola changes, or which liveries for Larrouse to use, or which drivers to put in for Simtek for example. I had a CD version, the official release which, and I've verified this with other people, seemed to get away with dummying out the cigarette adverts, and then (and I still got no idea how or why or who approved this at Microprose or the FIA/FOM/Fuji TV/etc) let the alcohol sponsors sail through unharmed, hello that Miller sponsorship on the Lotus, or the Molson Dry on the pit wall at Montreal though. Then again GP2 was not the only game doing that, I swear I remember Kaliber sneaking throughand that Fosters can at Donington (and a curiously squared off Melbourne Loop too for that matter) in Codies ToCA efforts as well, and there were more blatant offenders around the same time. Apparently in the 90s for racing sims, cigarettes bad, alcohol allowed, then?

[@rafleggy2fast486]

The Grand Prix series captured what many other sims failed to, the feeling of a race weekend in F1. Like you said, it's about the racing, the way you could trust the AI, the minutia that really meant they sat down and thought about all these tiny little details in F1. I like to compare it to Gran Turismo. Not directly, of course, but in how both games sometimes overlook specifics like tire modelling details or this and that specific aspect of physics but instead focus on presentation and "atmosphere" in a way that few other games do. The Grand Prix games delivered a challenge immersed in a presentation that really, at the end of a season, made me feel like getting into the last race after an interesting story of duels and battles up and down the grid that more modern sims simply dont capture. Not out of nostalgia from my part, but from knowing that the game systems helped build that. The random mechanical failures, the in-race occurrences that made me feel the other cars were also prone to mistakes and failures. Heck, even the fact that when you crash heavily you're left there looking at the car stopped in the barriers, just the sound of fans around you, while in the current F1 game you get a fancy cutscene and the whole thing goes in slow motion. It's not how it happens in real life. -- I've spent several years in the modding community and I'm so proud of what they achieved and so happy to have witnessed people doing their best for the game not for profit, but because they love the game and the sport. Worth noting that some of the best modders at the time (2001, 2002), like Ralph Hummerich, went on to make the car models for F1C99-02, giving the swan song of EA's first F1 foray the best car models they could have ever asked for.

[@andygreener3130]

Please do a video to document the weather. The wet not being everywhere was cool, the drying line was cool. No game since has done this well, ever.

[@DjFIL007]

Grand Prix 2 is the one that had me hooked as a young teenager and made me save up for my first wheel (non FFB of course, cause those didn't come out for a few more years). Recently reinstalled GP2 via DosBox and got my wheel working, and it is still really enjoyable to drive.

[@ICEMANZIDANE]

As someone who has started in the late 90s with simracing i lived through all of this and it was a awesome time (instead of whats offered today from the games standpoint and also the community…), anyways, i remember the time when we were driving F1 99 and F1 CH 99-02 and from time to time also GP4. What is stuck in my mind is that GP4 had HORRIBLE (!!!) controls and also menu navigation, it was a huge mess. And also, it felt dated even back then😅 PS: After watching the video i remembered the other aspects of the game, the positive ones. Yeah, the AI was really good back then, even today as we see and the tracks were quite accurate. One of our league members even got into the track building and converting scene and converted some tracks to F1 CH and rFactor (rf 1 ofcourse not the shit 2)

[@RaceSimCentral]

GP3 was really groundbreaking over GP2, but it ran like crap on even the best systems of the time. Not really surprised you couldn't get footage. It's really temperamental, for sure. And the replays often won't load. Crammond was announced by Hasbro for GP3 in a multi-title and multi-year deal. While you can assume the 2000 Addon to be maybe one of those titles, the press release suggests otherwise. I have some (poor quality) footage of the XBox GP4 version on my channel. Crammond was announced again (this time by Infogrames) for GP4 using language like "console debut" that really suggested multiple titles were coming yet again. The XB version of GP4 was reported by press to be complete when they tested it (where the footage I have came from). The lack of internet multiplayer in GP4 was a big deal at the time. This came 4 years after GPL, which was absolutely capable online. I think if it had internet multiplayer people would still be using GP4 way more...

[@RaceSimCentral]

I did some searching on my archives after posting this and found one of the press releases I was talking about. Hasbro signed a five year F1 deal in 1999 that would take them to 2005.

[@jasonmoyer]

I doubt multiplayer would have given GP4 a longer life. In fact, I bet having a good offline experience is why there are still people playing it now. Yeah, there is a still a trickle of people who still play GPL and NR2003 online, but for the most part people who race online just move to whatever the next big thing is that has multiplayer and the old games get abandoned. I think the one notable counter-example is RBR, but that's because no one has done a hardcore rally sim since then. If someone released a hardcore rally sim with good multiplayer people would all move to that.

[@DaveMcRee]

Great review, hehe. Jeff's F1GP (1) for me was awesome. never go tot see gp3, 4.

[@ZIGAG1999]

the sad thing is a lot of the modding websites for gp4 have died so a lot of content rn is missing.

[@tomwebb7091]

The genius of GP4 is in the physics and handling models. It was MILES ahead of its time. I still go back to it. Its so well developed that even playing on a keyboard works well and you can take on the AI on the harder levels.

[@Housestationlive]

even with official licensed, this studio didn't felt "forced" to release a new edition each year, which makes me think that they tend more to focus on new engine and new features rather than easy money.

[@iulian2548]

GP2 and GPL had the best physics in the 90's era in my opinion.

[@bloodangelz]

I started on Revs :) then me and friends had gatherings every weekend and did full season on all of Geoffs GP games. We took it serious, as we would spend the week testing set ups and then turn up Saturday and do qualifying together, and then come around Sundays and do the race day. Eventually we teamed up into teams and had seasons held every weekend. Had discs full of set ups

[@bloodangelz]

We eventually knew all corners in all tracks and what gears and speeds was needed

[@bloodangelz]

Geoffs games way better than the EA games. Handling was awesome and the set ups and the ability to play with friends on one pc, like we did. Where computer would take over your car and then hand over car handling of the next persons car to them

[@bloodangelz]

My cousin, would win championships mostly lol…. Sadly he passed away last year 😢

[@Jaimefumer13]

I don't know why but championship season in GP4 is great. Hot seat is very good IMHO.

[@pellenyberg]

Yes, gp4 and gpl are the only ones who have that "feeling" of a race season.

[@slaphead90]

I did play REVS and for the time it was absolutely mindblowingly realistic - I spent hours & hours on it. Missed the rest of GC's work because life happens.

[@Jesther01]

wow that brings back memories....

[@tyleracimovic823]

Holy crap. The track from Stunt Car Racer is in NASCAR Racing 2003 season as a mod called Stuntrak.

[@theabsolutedrive]

A detail that I have yet to see with my limited modern sim racing is how the tires of one car would interact with tires of another car. If you touch tires with another car in the Geoff Crammond GP games, the car that hit the back tire of the other car would hop up into the air. It's the simple laws of physics and I don't know any games that does this today. It doesn't even happen in Assetto Corsa and I've never played iRacing. So I cannot rule it out completely. But someone correct me if I'm wrong on that detail. Geoff Crammond was so into the littlest details that just simply get overlooked today.

[@Coxy_Wrecked]

Grand Prix 3 was a placeholder (using much of Grand Prix 2's engine) while Crammond worked on the true sequel,GP4.

[@Pozer714]

Stunt Car Racer was pretty fun!

[@Atticvs32]

Ah, I loved this game! ^^

[@StuM91]

Feel like I missed out on this era of racing sims, we never had a PC (that could play games). My only experience was "Official Formula 1 Racing" which I played at a relatives place and don't remember being very good.

[@SimManiac]

Started sim racing back in 2000 with GP3 and a MS Sidewinder wheel and pedal set (truly woeful by today's standards but everyone has to start somewhere!) Didn't bother with GP4 as saw it as just a roster update but now I wish I'd gave it a go.

[@robertthurman9866]

My favorite feature of the GP series was the "no player" option. When the first game came out it gave you a very basic paint program. You could color certain areas of the car, like a coloring book. I made my own teams and then made driver files to run a computer all time great drivers series. But after the third race I noticed the two fastest qualifiers would always be the slowest two drivers in the next race. So I dropped that idea.

[@andygreener3130]

100% 100% I actually loved this using A S You felt like you could push really hard and it forced you to do so in order to find that last 0.01. Weather effects and drying line were cool too

[@Wainster]

I loved this game series. At one point I played with an analogue joystick and pushed and pulled for acceleration and braking lol

[@TedMeat]

GP3 is quite underrated imo. It does have its flaws and with a little glance it feels like an updated GP2. However one should spend some time with it before putting it down, you'll notice that it's actually a huge step from GP2 with way deeper tyre modelling, dynamic weather, defending AI etc. Apart from graphics and frame rate it's honestly not that far off from GP4. But yeah, why play GP3 when it's hard to get working on modern PC:s (there's a tutorial on my channel that SHOULD work for most systems, u need DGVoodoo2 to run it), GP4 is easier to run, it's better, community around it is stronger etc etc. Also GP3 doesn't have the same nostalgy factor than GP2. Anyway, thanks for the video, I enjoyed it a lot. And I of course I agree with all the fangirling and all that :D

[@TacticalCardboard]

I went through your video while capturing footage for this, but it would run but it'd crash so frequently it was a lost cause.

[@TedMeat]

@@TacticalCardboard I see, sorry it didn't work for you. Well, looking forward to the GP2 video then.

[@LaCorvette]

I just like to see these little things occuring during the race. Also the cars are just fabulous. #v10

[@joefratianni8693]

I remember the first time I fired up Gp2 and hit the streets of Monaco. It was magical. I played some GP Legends, a little Nascar and then came back to Gp4. The engine sounds....perfection. F1 needs those screaming v10s back so bad.

[@ridetheblinds8425]

Amazing. I loved this game.

[@SimRacingFanDK]

I need to play it now :D

[@quaussiemoto3939]

You could mod GP4 when it was first released, I was doing that verry thing. Also with "GPedit" you could change the performance on a team by team basis you could give one team 50hp and one team 1500hp also you could change tyre grip %chance of failures and downforce, There was nothing better than running around 1200hp and about 20% more downforce that really got you on your toes.

[@johelsen5776]

Of course it's debatable, but I still think F1GP was THE biggest jump. Considering what else existed, It over-achieved on a ridiculous level in almost ALL departments (except maybe sound). A developer releasing this today, would be arrested for financially screwing his studio, lol... Today, a series like FIFA would spread the same evolution in level of innovation, game-design, accuracy, comprehensiveness, pushing the hardware, playability, execution and pure FUN over a decade or more. Crammond dumped it ALL into one single release, catapulting the genre from the stone age straight into early rocket-age. Back in the day, F1 in-car footage was new and rare, and a sim like F1GP in a way enabled you to bridge a much bigger gap in "experience" by putting you in that perspective. It was an absolutely flabbergasting experience at the time. Like Doom-level incredulity of what it was able to offer. Even when driving with a keyboard, a skilled player could almost FEEL the track. The thought that went into finetuning that... Only a labor of love achieves that.

[@pellenyberg]

Gp4 + Gpx patch + 2001mod. Nothing can't compet whit that. Thats racing. Regards from Sweden.

[@kitkatCSR]

Spent hours on this serious! Gp4 at the time was way above anything else and had wet weather (iRacing 😅) Geoff physics were something I remember he had said in an interview he went through a tunnel then thought the tunnel in Monaco would be dry in a wet track so the physics would need to be adjusted!!! Still has the best wet track look and only sim that will have a dry line forming and had to hunt the wet to cool the tyres! I don't understand how Iracing haven't hired GC as to m3 he is the Adrian Newey of game physics. 👍 we could only dream of a gp5!!!

[@bestopinion9257]

Grand Prix 2 is maybe the first game I ever played on PC. I am not sure if it was this or Lotus. Grand Prix 4 is the first racing game with accurate tracks (made by GPS). Even today there are games and sims with no accurate tracks... Those made via lasser scan are accurate, so few games with accurate tracks. Grand Prix 4 is in top 5 games for me and maybe, if I have to choose only one to play for the rest of my life, Grand Prix 4 is a serious candidate for that.

[@DKUGM]

wow, this still looks amazing. I had the pleasure to work on this game. as a freelancer 3d modeler. don't think I got a credit :(. Any idea what Jeff Crammond is up to these days?

[@db-mp2of]

Played GP1, 2, 3 and 4 These games always required elite hardware to run in full glory, for their time

[@jasonmoyer]

I really miss when sims were this focused on one series. I mean, we have ACC which is great, but man... we had Grand Prix Legends, multiple hardcore F1 sims (this was the best, though), the best NASCAR sim ever (and NASCAR Heat, which was also really good), GTL and GTR2, etc. all within the span of a couple years. And I can remember we were still bitching about how long it had been since Indycar 2 and about how RBR was great but it needed longer stages and how we still didn't have 70's GPL. I'd also really like to know why nothing has ever touched the Grand Prix AI. The Papy AI always seemed sketchy, but looking back even that was so much better than what we've had since. But anyway, it's been over 20 years, how has racing sim AI not matched and even exceeded what Geoff was doing in the GP games. I want to know what his secret was. The AI was so good, I used to retire on the grid, stick the camera in Director Mode, and just watch the AI brawl for hours. The tracks were also massively underrated. Especially compared to how hilariously awful the ISI F1 games' tracks were.

[@jasonmoyer]

OMG Haha. 29:06. I'm hearing Murray screaming "COULTHARD INTO THE WALL". I love that even on a relatively short video like this, you get to see a range of AI behavior. Oh yeah, and they nerfed it out of the box, but the collision damage modelling in this game is the best I've ever seen. Maybe RBR comes close. But I always loved cranking the damage sensitivity to the max in GPxPatch because you'd get stuff like, hitting a kerb too hard and ripping the wing off, going into the grass and shedding pieces of the car, touching wheels and slamming down and having the wheel/suspension come off, getting t-boned and having the safety cell and rear of the car separate.... awesome stuff and it's a 20 year old game. Damn it you're making me want to get my disc out again. Edit: Jesus, and finally, you didn't touch on it, but this had the best weather system ever. It could be dry at the pits and raining halfway around the track, but only in a couple corners. You'd have a dry line that formed based on where the cars were racing. IIRC you had to drive a wet line where you crossed the racing line because it had less grip. I remember stuff like the pits at Spa being completely dry, then you'd go flying into the back section and suddenly there's a downpour, then you get back through the bus stop and it's dry again. And the AI, of course, adapted to it. I remember a race at Malaysia in basically a thunderstorm and watching Villeneuve completely loop the car every few laps. Schumacher leading and locking the brakes and going straight off into the gravel, pieces of car everwhere from AI collisions when things were that treacherous. Damn what a racing sim.

[@toz2005]

Any chance you can cover f1 challenge it is one of those games that is rarely covered. Loved this retrospective on gp4 still got my CD of it

[@divinuminfernum]

GP3 is actually perhaps my favorite and you can play it on windows11 but best to use things like Dxwnd and DGvoodoo,.. but if you have graphics issues, it still has a software mode too. The game also had an expansion which covered the 2000 season