So it looks like it's we're back into "this is totally and completely countercultural for me" territory.
I'm just going to come out and say it, I know next to nothing about NASCAR. I know it's incredibly popular, but it's just not something I grew up with. I'm from the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line for that. But it's more than just regional. Racing just wasn't something my parents or anyone I knew paid attention to. As little as I know about NASCAR, I know even less about F-1 or rally racing or drag racing or whatever other competitive kinds of racing are out there. My extent of knowledge of the sport comes from not changing the channel when SportsCenter showed race footage between football highlights and coverage of MLB trade rumors. It's not that I don't have respect for NASCAR drivers, in fact I don't understand people that refuse to call them athletes. "They only make left turns!" Have you ever made a left turn going 200 MPH? Yeah, it's not that easy and its incredibly physically demanding. That was a bit of a tangent, but the point is despite the respect I have for NASCAR drivers, I know next to nothing about the sport.
The game offers and impressive roster of drivers, many of whom would be familiar even to non-fans. Jeff Gordon and the late Dale Earnhardt transcend the sport, but guys like Dale Jarrett, Bobby Labonte, Michael Waltrip and John Andretti were all familiar faces as well. WCW fans would certainly remember Mark Martin, as the promotion would provide updates on his races due to shared sponsorship by Valvoline, and Kyle Petty, who used to drive the NWO car (which sadly isn't in this game) and was technically a member of the faction. In all, there were more than 30 drivers to choose, which offers plenty of variety. Many of the sport's iconic tracks, like Daytona, Darlington and Bristol. I couldn't tell you if these were faithful recreations of these tracks but based on the care that was taken with other parts of the game I would assume yes. Honestly, the graphics on the tracks are a little lacking, there just isn't that much to look at or much to differentiate them from one another. The cars, however, look great, they are super detailed and look exactly like they should. Overall, there isn't a whole lot to really see, but what there is looks really good.
Controls are pretty simple, you can accelerate, brake, turn and switch camera angles and that's about it. I have to give credit to the camera angles, they have four, all of which are useful. There's a close-up view that's great for when you need to make more precise turns, a slightly wider angle so you can see what's ahead of you, an overhead view where you can see your opponents and a first person view. The first person view is pretty cool, it really makes you feel like you're behind the wheel and it was a welcome addition. If I had one issue it would be that you have to cycle through all the views every time you want to change, which is kind of a problem. You really need to use all of the views (unless you really want to do the whole immersive first person thing) to race to the best of your ability. The good news though is the controls are generally responsive while also doing a great job of maintaining a sense of actual realism. Your brakes actually work, but you can't stop on a dime, which is how it should be. Turning feels like it should in a simulation racing game, not too stiff but not so precise that it eliminates any and all challenge. Throughout the race, you will have a pit crew chief in your ear, providing advice on what to do and letting you know when you should pit. Some of the stuff is pretty basic and I could see a longtime fan turning it off, but I found it to be a welcome feature. It was especially critical in the first person view where you couldn't see opponents behind you.
I think the best feature of the NASCAR '99 is its physics engine. Without this, it would just be a bunch of cars making left turns around the track. I'm not a huge racing game afficionado, but I find developers often have difficulty differentiating between what should go in a simulation style game and what should go in something more arcade-y. That wasn't the case here, EA knew exactly what to do to make NASCAR '99 feel like a racing sim, which is obviously a positive. Take a turn too hard and you will hit a wall. Trade too much paint with another racer and you will both start to lose control, requiring you to lay off the gas to regain it. You can even draft, which I know is a big thing in NASCAR. It was a little frustrating at first, I found myself on the infield quite frequently on my early playthroughs, but once I got it down, I found it rewarding. I also like the pit stop process; you don't have to play some stupid mini game but you do get to choose what exactly you do during your stops. The more changes you make, the longer you are in the pits, so it's really important to stay on top of your fuel and damage.
The biggest problem for me, frankly, was the sheer amount of car customization I will fully admit I didn't understand. This is where genre bias kicks in, this stuff would probably be a selling point for NASCAR and simulation racing fans, but it was a barrier to entry for me. You can choose what kind of tires you put on, how much you want to inflate those tires and what durability you want. You can adjust the angle of your spoiler, the tightness of your shocks, the strength of your brakes, anything you could possibly imagine. I'm sure this stuff is relevant to race fans, but I just don't really know what I'm doing or why. I'm sure there's a reason you would use looser shocks, or a certain track that caters to one kind of tire, but I just don't know enough to make an informed decision on these things. You can get a few wins that way, but it's eventually going to reach the point where you have to optimize your vehicle and I just never could get there. Again, this is probably a positive for fans of the sport, it's kind of the "game within a game" that every athletic competition has. But for me, it made the game difficult to get in to.
My other major gripe is that there's no music during races. I get that they're trying to make it as much of a simulation as possible, but it really just made things a bit more boring than they should have been. You don't have to have the music insanely loud, you still want to hear the pit crew and announcers, but it would be nice to have some background noise other than engines revving. I understand that this was all kind of before EA started licensing music like crazy but having one or two songs would have been nice. I'm not really a big country music fan, but it would have fit perfectly here and would likely have been a hit with the target audience. The menus also were a little strange, they were sometimes difficult to navigate and confusing. It was way more difficult and less intuitive to choose a racer and track than it should have been.
Overall, I had more fun with NASCAR '99 than I ever thought I would, even if I probably won't play it again. Like Jet Grind Radio, it's hard for me to give this game an objective score because I wasn't really the target audience. A lot of the things that made this game inaccessible to me would probably be counted as positives by race fans. And that's okay. Not every game is going to be everyone's cup of tea. I was able to get a little bit out of this game, but I felt like I barely scratched the surface here. Maybe I will revisit this later, and NASCAR fans will certainly find something to like, but for me:
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