Electronic Arts has been capturing all of the pageantry and intensity of NASCAR for, get this, over ten years now. You learn a lot in ten years of making cars turn left, such as that fine line between sim-reality and arcade-fun, not to mention how important licensing is for a sport that has fans who feel so strongly about the Big Three that they are willing to sport truck-window stickers of Calvin peeing on the logos of “the enemy.”
Of course, there’s a lot in between striking a balance between racing fantasy and racing reality—and unparalleled licensing rights—but we have faith in EA’s Orlando-based Tiburon studios. Tiburon has had its claws in the NASCAR franchise since 2005. These sharpened talons have also worked on earlier series, such as the well-received Thunder line of NASCAR-branded games of the earlier 2000s. Tiburon even has staff members that worked on the critically acclaimed PC titles from Papyrus. These boys know their stock-car racin’.
The game-making talent and passion for stock-car racing has been firmly in place at EA Tiburon for a few years now, so it’s no big surprise that the team’s first Xbox 360 effort—NASCAR 08—was stout. However, 2008 is but a livery-laden speck in a lead dog’s rear view to the Tiburon pit crew, as we’ve recently learned via an impressive (albeit it’s an early “alpha”) build of NASCAR 2009.
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