NASCAR 98 is the first game for EA Sports to be with NASCAR, which they did a NASCAR game through NASCAR 09. In its first foray to the industry, it brought itself to the Playstation and Sega Saturn. This was getting to the boom of NASCAR in the 90's and EA struck gold with it through 2005-2006 of course as well with their NASCAR games, then onward to the NASCAR Thunder series and so forth. So in the first edition, what does NASCAR 98 do well? Also they made a Collectors Edition, so what did I think of that?
Positives:
1. Good graphics- It wasn't flashy, it wasn't tadow worthy or anything but it was just solid graphics for the time on the Playstation. I felt with this being the first go round for EA with NASCAR, if hey just made a solid enough game, they would have been alright, and they did pretty decently well with the graphics.
2. Top drivers- Like Tecmo did with Tecmo Bowl on the NES, you needed big names for the NASCAR games to start and EA knew that as well. That's why guys like Dale Earnhardt, Terry Labonte, Bobby Labonte, Jeff Gordon, and so forth are in this game. They needed the big names in the game to sell it and they got them.
3. Realistic cars- Yes the graphics on the cars are rough, but I more denote that to the first time EA did a NASCAR game. It would have been a negative but the paint schemes are roughly similar to those of the 1997 makes and models so they did very well with that. Believe me, they did better with the cars in the coming years so I didn't hold a grudge on the rough looking cars overall.
4. Racing- It's actually fun to race on this game, the tracks are very much able to provide good racing and overall they felt good to do.
Added: Please use the paint ball mode at least once on this game, it's quite good fun.
Negatives:
1. Fantasy tracks- This is the one game where I felt the fantasy tracks just weren't very good. I think that had to do with just their layouts but overall I came away from them very underwhelmed overall. Again, this was a first go round so I am more willing to forgive them in the grand scheme of things.
2. No full field- I think this was more of a product of the times but also I was willing to give more slack to the guys at EA for this one on the first game rather than the rest of the games. I wasn't expecting a full field in this game, because their competitors with Papyrus at the time didn't either for their NASCAR game. I did expect it in later games as EA had a base but still didn't get it done until NASCAR Thunder 2002.
3. Lap times- I am not sure why they weren't more accurate. For instance, Charlotte and Texas take 40 plus seconds to get a lap done? What? And the game had the right mileage of the tracks so I am not sure why some are good on lap times and why at Bristol you do nearly 12-13 second laps. It was incredibly mystifying to me.
4. Driving- This is a negative as the cars themselves to drive are incredibly tough on response. Either too responsive and you turn too much and hit the inside wall on some tracks or not enough and you hit the outside wall on tracks. There was a very fine line on good response on driving.
Added: I didn't like the rubber band tendency of the AI, meaning if you got out to a 1-2 second lead they would be right back to you in a lap or two.
Collector's Edition:
The two major things here are that Darlington is added and Richard Petty is added to the game as well. You also got a pretty neat keychain (of which I don't have anymore) but the whole thing is still largely the same as the original NASCAR 98.
Overall Rating
Overall, I'd give NASCAR 98 a thought and would recommend, if you are a more casual gamer and fan. If you are a diehard, you'll find faults on this easily and it is easy to see why. I think EA did get better overall on a lot of this, minus the field thing until the aforementioned game above. I think just from a basic standpoint, EA did well with their first NASCAR game.
Overall rating: 8 out of 10.
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