Hands-On with NASCAR Heat

Hasbro Interactive stopped by the GameSpot offices earlier this morning to show us the progress of NASCAR Heat, a racing game currently in development at Monster Games. Started by ex-Papyrus founder Rich Garcia, Monster Games is responsible for developing Sierra Sports' Viper Racing, which was released in 1998. The company is currently positioning NASCAR Heat to compete with serious simulators like NASCAR Racing 3 from Papyrus and more casual games like NASCAR 2000 from EA Sports.

Distinguising NASCAR Heat from other games are its Beat the Heat challenge and Race the Pros single-player modes. Challenge is a set of 36 mission-based driving levels that are broken down into six groups of six races. Each of these races gets increasingly difficult, and each needs to be successfully completed before each subsequent set of challenges becomes available. The races themselves focus only on the action aspect of NASCAR racing and include scenarios like the final five laps of the Daytona 500 and historical races.

In designing the Race the Pros mode, Monster Games got all the Winston Cup NASCAR drivers to record their best in-game lap times on all the tracks in the NASCAR circuit. Here, you'll try to best all the Winston Cup drivers by racing against their respective ghost cars in an attempt to beat their lap times. NASCAR champ Bobby Labonte serves as the technical advisor to NASCAR Heat, and he will offer racing advice to players in this mode.

NASCAR Heat is currently scheduled to ship in late summer for the PC.