Dirt Track Racing

This afternoon I was flipping around on the boob tube looking for something interesting while everyone was taking a nap when I came across an interesting show on demolition derby on the Discovery Times Channel. It was fairly interesting and made me realize that it has been three or so years since I played Destruction Derby, which was one of the key reasons I preordered a PlayStation.

Next up was a show on dirt track racing, which was more entertaining than the demolition derby show. We are not talking about top-notch entertainment, but both shows made me realize that I missed my calling in life. I should have been a mechanic by day and a racer on the weekends. My slogan above my store would have read “We only rip you off half as much as the other guys!”

Seriously, as much as I write (or used to write) about cars, racing, tuning, and such, I really am not a gear-head. Maybe I will have to do something about that one day, but like a lot of other things, it will not happen today.

Anyway, watching the two shows about demolition derby and dirt track racing made me realize that Ratbag’s World of Outlaws Sprint Cars 2002 is a great racing game that developed a cult following at sports sites. My understanding is that it is now “rare” on eBay, but the game just never caught on with mainstream gamers. I guess the graphics were not sexy enough, but WoO’s racing action is second to none.

Of course like too many other games, WoO never got the absolute attention that it deserved from this gamer. I always played it in spurts, but never solid balls to the walls gaming sessions that games like Colin McRae Rally 2.0, Gran Turismo, and various F1 games received. I definitely need to give it another spin sometime soon because it would be the perfect racing game to hold me over until GT4 arrives. A paid for game is a much better proposition than spending more money on something that is probably not half as good as WoO.

Saturday Night Speedway (also by Ratbag) is another dirt track game that I need to pop back into the PS2. Unlike WoO, I barely gave Saturday Night Speedway a decent chance. I have no idea what distracted me from the game, but I only played it a handful of times before it was pushed to the back of the library.

Thanks to the Discovery Times Channel I now have 3-4 more titles that once again deserve time in my rotation. We are truly in a special age of gaming – it is amazing that there are so many good “current” games today that deserve our time, but there are still plenty of games released in the last 10 years that deserve just as much attention.