IHRA Professional Drag Racing 2005 E3 2004 Preshow Impressions

Bethesda Softworks is best known for its sprawling role-playing games such as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, but it's also the publisher of a best-selling series of drag racing simulations. Drag racing, of course, is a motorsport about pure speed. Drivers needn't concern themselves with cornering or any navigating of any kind but must instead push their superpowered driving machines to the absolute limit by coaxing the utmost out of their engines in a very short amount of time. It's a technical, intense sport that the IHRA Drag Racing series captures with all due complexity. The next game in the series will feature 50 accurately detailed, customizable vehicles, realistic weather conditions, new off-track options, such as the parts shop and trophy room, an arcade mode, and more.

The game will allow you to race in four different professional-level IHRA categories: top fuel, pro mod, pro stock, and alcohol funny car. Top fuel cars are the most powerful, fastest drag racers, capable of pushing 6,000 horsepower and more than 300 miles per hour. Pro modified cars epitomize the hot rod, and vary significantly in their physical appearances as well as in their characteristics, though such cars are capable of 2,000-horsepower performances. In contrast, pro stock cars must meet strict regulations, putting the onus squarely on the driver to push these machines to their potentials. Finally, funny cars are the quickest category of the bunch, and these lightweight machines' incredible acceleration must be managed carefully.

For any of these race categories, the game will provide both TV-style broadcast presentations as well as a visceral first-person perspective designed to give you a feel for what the real-life drivers of these vehicles might feel like behind the wheel.

Though drag racing appears to be simple, again, it's actually very technical. However, for the racing purist seeking pick-up-and-play appeal from this game, there will be an arcade mode designed to deliver the thrills of drag racing without a lot of the complicated nuances. Additionally, off-the-track options will allow players to fully customize their experiences by letting players paint their cars to their specification, fine-tune their cars in the garage, or admire the results of their performances in the trophy room.

IHRA Drag Racing 2005 is slated to ship this fall for the PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. Stay tuned for additional details.