''NASCAR Racing 2003 Season'', or ''NR2003'' for short, is a computer racing simulator released in February 2003 by

Papyrus Design Group Papyrus Design Group, Inc. was a computer game developer founded in 1987 by David Kaemmer and CEO Omar Khudari. Based in Watertown, Massachusetts, Watertown, Massachusetts, it is best known for its series of realistic sim racing games based on th ...

for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. The game was the last to be released by the company before

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they imitated real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" (EASN) ...

bought the

NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...

license exclusively from 2004 to 2009 (parent company Sierra's successor company,

Activision Blizzard Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes three operating units: Activision, Blizzard Entertainment and King (company), King. Founded in July 2 ...

, reacquired NASCAR rights in 2011, with '' NASCAR The Game: 2011''). The game included all of the 2003 NASCAR season tracks and many of the drivers, including

Dave Blaney David Louis Blaney (born October 24, 1962) is an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver. Blaney was a successful Sprint car racing, sprint car driver before he started racing in NASCAR, competing in both the Sprint Cup Series ...

, who was absent in

NASCAR Thunder 2004 ''NASCAR Thunder 2004'' is a racing simulator by EA Sports, released on September 16, 2003 and available in separate versions for PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows. This was the last NASCAR game for the PlayStation. It was succeeded ...

. In May 2003, Papyrus published a free DLC for the game, containing three fictional tracks.

Gameplay

''NASCAR Racing 2003 Season'' contains 42 Winston Cup teams that were anticipated to run throughout the season, with the exception of the cars from

Chip Ganassi Racing Chip Ganassi Racing, LLC (CGR), also sometimes branded as Chip Ganassi Racing Teams, is an American auto racing organization competing in the NTT IndyCar Series. They have formerly competed in the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series, Global Rally ...

, as well as 23 Winston Cup series tracks, putting the player behind the wheel of a NASCAR stock car. Players are able to choose between testing sessions, offline single racing, championship, and multiplayer options as well as car setup choices.

Ownership

At the end of March 2004, ''NR2003'' was pulled from shelves when

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

acquired the exclusive NASCAR rights. In May 2004, Papyrus was shut down, and David Kaemmer bought the source code and assets a couple months later for his company FIRST, LLC where it became the base code for

iRacing ''iRacing'' is a subscription-based online sim racing video game developed and published by iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations in 2008. All in-game sessions are hosted on the publisher's servers. The game simulates real world cars, tracks, and ...

. In 2007, Sierra, the game's publishers, shut down the online servers.

Reception

The game received "generally favorable reviews", according to the review aggregation website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. According to ''

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

'', the game sold at least 100,000 units in the U.S., but was beaten by '' NASCAR Racing 4''s 260,000 sales in the region. Total US sales of ''NASCAR Racing'' computer games released in the 2000s reached 900,000 units by August 2006. The game won ''

PC Gamer US ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...

'' 2003 "Best Racing Game" award. The magazine's Andy Mahood wrote that it "established a daunting new standard for PC racing simulations that may take years to eclipse".

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nascar Racing 2003 Season 2003 video games MacOS games Multiplayer and single-player video games NASCAR video games Papyrus Design Group games Racing simulators Racing video games Sierra Entertainment games Video games developed in the United States Windows games