PS1 Game Review: NASCAR 2000

 NASCAR 2000 marked the end of an era in ways as the NASCAR franchises still made games for PS1 but ultimately put a lot of their resources into the PS2 games from here onward.  NASCAR 2000 was the last of the editions on the PS1/N64 before NASCAR 2001 became available on the next gen consoles, starting with the PS2. What does NASCAR 2000 do well?  What needed improving on as they went next Gen the following year? All that and more below!

Positives:

1. More fluid driving: You don't find yourself having to put more response in the controller to turn, brake and hit the gas.  This is honestly done well.  You have some control over how you drive the race car which is pretty much the most important thing.

2. Nice graphics: Overall the graphics are nice, if choppy (honestly I won't render choppy graphics as a negative as that was the case for nearly every racing and NASCAR game up to PS2) but they did well lighting up a track, making the car visible and much more.

3. Fantasy tracks: I thought these were done very well.  All of the fantasy tracks in this game are done really well and don't take away from the original schedule on the game itself. 

4. Commentary: It's not overwhelming or underwhelming.  Both Bob Jenkins and Benny Parsons make a good commentary combo in this game.

Negative:

1. No Daytona: Don't worry it is one year away but to be honest, given the only difference between 2000 and 2001 is next gen console, it is very odd they didn't feature Daytona when the game was based on 1999's season but I guess I digress.

2. No full field: This one is more confusing than Daytona, because at least Daytona has the track rights to not have been put in a game.  I don't know what EA's excuse was at the time because it still took 2 full games to get it a full field when its competitor, NASCAR Heat and PC version, NASCAR Racing, both made major strides to this almost right away. 

Overall Rating

Overall, NASCAR 2000 is a fluid, solid racing game but lack of a full field and a lack of a full schedule (IE: Missing Daytona mainly) made it feel less solid.  If you like the racing, then it's good, and being able to put yourself as a driver in several made up cars is a cool feature enough.  However there is a lot of notable lacking features in this game that they didn't really solve until the NASCAR Thunder series of games.

Overall Rating: 7.5 out of 10.  It's a good, but not great game overall.