HANDS ON GUIDE

Number 05 - Grand Prix Legends

Old F1 cars, classic course, and legendary driving difficulty toovercome

Papyrus, 1998

Naturally, playing an accurate simulation of any form of motorsport is going to be difficult – that’s why we’re not all racing drivers and why good ones are paid millions and millions of pounds a year. However, playing a game that, in addition to having a fair claim to being one of the most accurate racing simulations of all time, but that’s also set during the Formula 1 season of 1967 is a recipe for total carnage and despair.

In Grand Prix Legends you drive cars that weigh very little, have no ground force beyond good old fashioned gravity and run on tires that, compared to modern slicks, are as wide as ties. And about as grippy. You can then add to that some of the most dangerous racing circuits in existence, as Legends includes the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Zipping around an oval track might be all right for some numpties, but Grand Prix Legends includes all fourteen twisted miles of a track that by 1970, was being boycotted by F1 drivers as too dangerous. Niki Lauda put his pole position lap on the ‘Ring in 1975 down to the fact that he “wasn’t afraid to die.”

Back then, Formula 1 was an blend of bravery, fast cars, dangerous crashes and a complete lack of high technology and Grand Prix Legends captures it completely. In the game, car set up can be customised to a high degree, and they need to be. If your wheel camber is out, you lose traction, if your ride height is too low you risk your suspension bottoming out, if your gear ratios are out of whack you risk not going fast enough in the first place. It’s all nice and technical and completely bereft of the sorts of things seen on modern cars, such as spoilers to stick them to the track and big fat slick tyres.

Once you’re on the track, until you’re an expert, the experience is not so much driving but rather an attempt to maintain a constant state of nearly crashing until the race is over. Going fast makes the cars very twitchy and braking needs to be done very early or else you’re going to end up in a wall – and the walls are usually very, very close to the track. Even if you can master getting your machine round the track reasonably quickly, you’ve still got all the fun of the actual race to worry about. You have to beat the AI drivers who, while of variable skill, are at least able to negotiate the circuit at pace.

Critics gave Grand Prix Legends hell for being too difficult when it came out, and they were right to, in the general sense. The vast majority of gamers could never play this game, let alone win the championship. The Mount Everest-like learning curve is not only steep, but it goes a long, long way up. Those who can handle this classic title are few in number and without question can count themselves the best drivers in PC gaming.

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