Dirt Track Racing was a straightforward driving game that used Ratbag's Powerslide 3D engine to simulate racing stock cars around short oval courses. It was published by WizardWorks earlier this year, and while its gameplay was somewhat mundane, it did a good job of accurately simulating the dynamic of driving around in circles for a number of laps. But there's a lot more to the new installment, Dirt Track Racing: Sprint Cars. This budget-priced stand-alone follow-up completely reinvigorates the original game by adding four new car types, 20 racetracks, and a host of updated graphics and gameplay mechanics.
The most obvious of these new enhancements is the addition of the incredibly odd-looking sprint cars. These off-road contraptions resemble typical dune buggies, save for their staggered wheel sizes and massive roof-mounted wings. You've probably seen them in ESPN bloopers as they tumble end over end into a hapless crowd of onlookers. Regardless, the game features 16 preset cars and licensed drivers for you to choose from and also gives you the option of creating and customizing your own car. You can choose from one of four models and a variety of different paint jobs: Green, Hubgarner, Ferkel, and Merril are the four vehicle classes, and each is more powerful than the next. In fact, the Merril class is capable of producing up to 820hp, which makes these cars significantly trickier to control than their stock car counterparts from Dirt Track Racing. However, despite the drastic change in the types of vehicles available in Sprint Cars, the game's premise remains unchanged from that of Dirt Track Racing: You race around oval-shaped dirt tracks as you progress from one racing event to the next in hopes of being crowned the champion. At its core, Sprint Cars is made up of little more than these extremely short and equally repetitive oval races. While each track is indeed different from the rest, there's little variance in the game's oval dirt courses.
There are a total of ten different race events, each of which comprises anywhere between two and five individual races. These races are also split up into practice, qualifying, heat, and race sessions. You'll get a small appearance prize for simply showing up at these circuits, although posting the fastest qualifying lap, placing first in the heats, and finishing in the top three slots during a race will yield you the most prize cash. You can enter all but two of the ten events from the outset of the game, but since the competition is tougher in the later events, you're better off going through each of them in the correct order. Additionally, you'll receive numerous sponsorship opportunities from a number of companies, depending on your performance in each of these ten events. You can choose to accept or reject these offers at will, but accepting them will naturally grant you more money, with which you can buy new cars or upgrade your existing ones with performance parts.
This ability to upgrade your car's performance is another of Sprint Cars' high points. You can do so either by buying new parts in between races or by tweaking certain values of your car's suspension, transmission, and exhaust. The sheer number of options available is quite impressive. You can tune the toe and camber of your wheels, the spacing between the drive wheels and the axle, tire pressure, brake strength, tire size, tire compound, steering lock, wheel travel, compression and rebound rate of the shocks, shock type, wing position... the list goes on and on. It might be tempting to fiddle around with all these figures, though doing so really does have a noticeable impact on your car's performance. Since the default setting is usually fine, you're better off leaving the details alone unless you're really into tinkering with cars. Otherwise, if you need additional power but can't afford a new car, you can buy parts such as cylinder heads and fuel injectors, which should keep your car competitive.
Sprint Cars also lets Dirt Track Racing owners import tracks from the original game. While Sprint Cars has nearly 20 racetracks of its own, they're all ovals, and they can get repetitive pretty quickly. The added variety of the Dirt Track Racing racetracks, especially the figure-eight ones, are a welcome addition to Sprint Cars, and they can add a significant amount of replay value to the game. Sprint Car's replay director mode is yet another addition not found in Dirt Track Racing. This feature lets you custom-edit replays by giving you the ability to fade from one camera to the next, set predetermined camera paths, and pull off a host of other post-production effects. You can then take your final product and export it into an AVI file in either 15- or 30-frame-per-second formats. In all, this feature can seem a bit intimidating, but the documentation that accompanies Sprint Cars provides easy-to-follow instructions on how to create your own replay movies.
Dirt Track Racing pioneered the simulation of the "groove" effect associated with the real-life dirt track racing motor sport. This occurs when the driving line of each track gets worn down after numerous laps, forcing you and the other drivers to either drive high along the outside of the groove or low on the inside of each corner. Sprint Cars retains the groove effect and introduces yet another racing dynamic: the adjustable wing. During each race, you can move the car's massive wing forward to flatten its angle relative to the ground to decrease downforce on the car or to slide it backward to increase downforce. Less downforce on your car increases its speed and acceleration but handicaps its traction, especially during cornering. The trick becomes manipulating the wing forward during straightaways and sliding it backward while you make turns. Since each track is no longer than three-quarters of a mile, you'll find yourself moving the wing back and forth many times during each race. Or you might opt to leave the wing at its default setting if you haven't had much experience on the track.
Visually, Sprint Cars shows its age, as its Powerslide engine was developed more than two years ago. However, the developer has made a number of enhancements to the engine since the release of the original Dirt Track Racing in order to keep the visuals fresh. The ability to look left and right from within the cockpit is one such feature, as is the addition of visible car damage. For example, slamming into a wall at high speed will snap your axle in two, leaving your wheel hanging limply to one side. Likewise, cars that wind up tumbling sideways will land in a crumpled heap. More often than not, you'll find that the number of cars that finish each race is significantly less than the number that start. Cars will also kick up dirt and leave deep skid marks in the dirt as they slide through each corner. These minor details really enhance the realism of Sprint Cars. The sound is also slightly better than Dirt Track Racing's, as engine noises seem more throaty; and at high speeds, wind noise becomes quiet audible.
Once the computer-controlled opponents stop posing a challenge, you can test your mettle against nine other human drivers through Sprint Cars' multiplayer modes, which include support for LAN servers and GameSpy Internet servers. Connecting or creating your own multiplayer server is a breeze, and it can be accomplished in just a few mouse clicks. Otherwise, Sprint Cars does seem to have a few stability issues that may make the game crash back to Windows at seemingly random occasions. And players without an analog joystick or steering wheel will find it nearly impossible to control the finicky cars with either the mouse or keyboard. Nevertheless, fans of the original Dirt Track Racing, let alone the actual motor sport, will undoubtedly enjoy Sprint Cars and the numerous additions and enhancements it offers.
