Indycar Racing 2 was a good game in 1995; in a way, it was the crisis of the Clinton years, in that most mortals couldn’t exploit it to its full potential when it was new. However, this potential was surely quite limited, since it is a DOS game from 30 years ago. Sure, it was limited, but limits are meant to be broken and games are made to be changed. (TedMeat) made a video showing the updates. (Embedded below.)
It turns out that a 3D accelerated version was sold with the short-lived Rendition graphics cards. This release allows the community to upgrade everything up to the absurd resolutions our modern monitors are capable of. Goodbye SVGA, hello HD. Specifically, (sharangad) created a wrapper to translate the Rendition API to modern hardware. It doesn’t appear that any high-resolution textures have been modified, in which case it looks spectacular for graphics designed in 1995. It’s not the last Forza, but for what it is, it impresses.
The second hack TedMeat talks about is a mod by (GPLaps) that extracts physics values from the game’s memory and sends them to a modern force feedback wheel, and it shows how good physics was in 1995. You can really feel what’s happening – stopping a skid before it starts, for example. That’s normal these days, but for kids playing with a keyboard in 1995, it would have been totally mind-blowing.
As the tipster (Keith Olson) said, “What can I say? Fans are going to be fans!” – and we are just as grateful for this fact as we are for this information. If you’re part of a fandom that’s working to keep old favorites alive, we’d love to hear about it: submit a tip to us.