Codemasters - Press News - Coming Soon Magazine

November 21 sees the launch of TOCA Touring Car Championship from Codemasters

Southam, UK, September 1997 -- Programmers have taken a break from modelling Micro Machines and their table-top tracks to design a real car racing game featuring the cars, tracks and teams of the 1997 British Touring Car Association Championship. This is Codemasters' first true-life racing title and is officially licensed by TOCA.

The eight teams from top European manufacturers who compete in this annual series feature the following high-performance road cars - Peugeot 406, Renault Lagune, Audi A4, Volvo 540, Vauxhall Vectra, Ford Mondeo, Honda Accord and Nissan Primera. These are photo-realistically modelled down to the finest details of advertising on the paint jobs and the cars will crumple and damage convincingly when crashed, spun and overturned. These motors are quite evenly matched and racing tends to take place in tight packs with the odd car or pair of cars breaking away if they can clear through the crowd.

In such close-fought races tiffs are inevitable and you're going to have your work cut out to avoid the bumps, crumps, shunts and multiple-car spins which are a feature of every race. Besides putting you in the pits or out of the race such contacts will make a mess of your streamlined bodywork. Driving around with wings hanging off is no joke and carrying on a race with crumpled bodywork which spoils your aerodynamic performance can spell the difference between a championship place and a tail-end finishing position.

It's important then to get yourself a good place on the starting grid by driving the practice and timed sessions to allow you and your pits team to refine your car's setup and engine tuning for each of the Championship tracks at Donnington Park GP, Silverstone International, Thruxton, Brands hatch, Indy, Oulton Park, Croft, Knockhill and Snetterton. Each track is accuratelyy modelled in 3D from Ordnance Survey maps.

A full range of views is available for racing and reviewing your performance including a dramatic head cam view from inside the driver's helmet that judders with the suspension movement and G-forces on the car. The game supports current driving specific controllers and the cars will respond with the real physics of their steering, torque and suspension and traction capabilities according to setup, track conditions and prevailing weather. This being Britain, you can expect the full gamut of weather conditions so you can be driving with bright sun flaring in your windscreen on a dry track at one moment and be surprised by a sudden rain swept track and dark thundery skies the next.

With one copy of the game you can drive any of the eight cars against artificial intelligence modelled on the 1997 works team drivers behaviour or connect up additional controllers for a two player mode on the Playstation version and four player on PC. In PC network play, eight real drivers can compete against each other.

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