F1 Challenge (F-1 ライブ インフォメーション F-1 Live Information?) is an officially licensed Formula One game developed by Bell Corporation and produced by Sega for the Sega Saturn. The game contains only three of the many Formula One Circuits, Hockenheim, Monte Carlo and the Suzuka Circuit while having another three based on the fictional Neo City containing three different configurations.[1] While containing a full license (The license is granted by FOCA, not the FIA) of the 1995 Formula One racing season with thirteen teams and twenty-six drivers, the game only allows the player to play as five drivers: Michael Schumacher (Benetton), Damon Hill (Williams), Jean Alesi(Ferrari), Ukyo Katayama (Tyrrell), and Mika Häkkinen (McLaren). The other teams and drivers are in the game and the cars are correctly modeled but are unselectable.
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infância vibes
Greatest racing game of all time. That's it.
A game I've spent 16 years wrestling with to behave exactly how it should. When the stars align, it's the best Formula 1 experience bar none, but it's just too broken to waste any more time with these days.
Ok so here goes my journey through every F1 game that's on PC and worth talking about.
Alright so F1 Challenge 99-02 is def a racing game classic and its existence is...very consumer friendly? We sure this is EA?
Fucking hell, so okay this is basically taking F1 99, 2000, 2001 and 2002 and putting them together into one single game. A Halo MCC of sorts for this series of F1 games, but working on release.
And yeah it's pretty great actually, very unique and fun to have an F1 game that covers multiple seasons of the sport. Especially in a sport as ever evolving and changing as F1.
Playing through the seasons you can see and feel the cars changing, getting faster, having more grip, corners that in 99 were more difficult you can attack with much more ease by the time you get to 02.
It's got a few things figured out better than even the newest F1 game, for once, they actually update the tracks woah. Unlike with the modern games it doesn't take years for a circuit to be updated to reflect how it is currently. Some tracks are updated in all 4 seasons included.
There's differences between Albert park in 99 and 02, Monza 01 and 02, etc...
Also the racing itself is some of the most fun in any F1 game that I've played, the AI will make mistakes and random bullshit will happen but this is accurate to the sport, looking at the results of an average race from the late 90s and early 2000s, you're lucky if less than say 6 cars don't DNF. So ofc in the game you'll constantly hear x driver is retiring, they've blown the engine.
Actually quite funny sometimes, very nice sometimes too, especially when someone in the points DNFs and that gives you an extra position, maybe an extra point, vital point.
During this era only the top 6 got points and the difference between 2nd and 1st was 4 points which was A LOT back then. It is a bit annoying coming from newer games where you can finish 7th and go 6 points thats pretty good to fuck 7th? damn no points ig but in the championship overall it closes everything up and suddenly you'll be fighting much more aggressively for every position since every point is important. How important you might ask? Well in my 2002 season I won the championship by a single point over Schumacher.
Mechanical issues can happen to you too, I had my 2001 championship fight pretty much ended after a collision resulted in my car stopping half a lap later, making me lose points that would have helped me keep the fight going in the final rounds. Could I have restarted? Sure, would that have been any fun? Agh prb not.
After you play F1 games as much as me, you get bored and tired of just putting the difficulty to where you win every race. Sometimes being in a midfield car fighting for points and the occasional podium is more fun. The 99 season was spent in a mediocre Benetton, taking me to a distant third in the championship with 2 wins and quite a few podiums. My 2000 season went much better, going with the BMW Williams team and getting the championship wrapped up before the last race due to my opponent having a mechanical issue while leading the USA grand prix, gifting me the win and the championship.
In 2001 I decided to go with McClaren and things didn't go very well, while I did take the fight to Schumacher for the first half of the season, retirements and bad results ultimately made me a very distant 2nd in the championship (skill issue).
2002 was redemption time, going back to Williams and winning the championship by 1 point as noted earlier, trading wins left and right with Schumacher, getting 8/17 wins, scoring points in all but 2 races where I DNF'd. It was the hardest of the seasons despite being in the 2nd best car, the reason it was so hard was because well the Ferrari that year was one of the most dominant cars in history. IRL Michael Schumacher was on another galaxy compared to everyone else, getting a top 3 result in every single race of the season, having the championship won with 6 races to go and him alone having more points than all the other teams. It is the perfect season, only thing that comes close would be perhaps Max Verstappens current season if he keeps it up (already won 10/12 races, 8 in a row, got 2nd in the other 2).
So yeah the ferrari was always on my tail and closing in and sometimes it was just as much about outsmarting the opponents as outracing them, a good tactic is to try and slow down the car behind so others close in, if they try an overtake and you defend properly they might make a mistake, others overtake and now you can pick up the pace more.
Your mistakes are also punished just as hard, go off track, hit someone, put yourself in a bad situation and you could lose your front wing, rear wing, maybe even one of your tires lol. I had a bit of a dramatic Monaco GP in the 99 season where I fucked up my front wing but since there were only 2 laps remaining I decided to stick it out and try to defend, Monaco is known for being a very hard circuit to drive and also overtake which was crucial to me getting the win despite my car not being able to take a fucking turn to save its life.
Though this game's driving actually is the most fun for Monaco, very smooth, very precise but still punishing, easy to go in with too much speed and end up understeering into a wall but when things go right it's one of the most satisfying things to get that one perfect lap.
Yeah agh I think I've been rambling on enough, this game is great, fun driving model, has that early 2000s racing game charm, interesting for F1 history nuts like me, nice progression over the 4 seasons. Cool seeing all these great drivers in their prime, and new drivers come in that ended up greats of the sport themselves (Kimi, Button). If you want an old racing game to spend 30+ hours in or are interested in an F1 game that covers older seasons, go for it.
Also should mention there's a huge ass mod for this game that puts in EVERY season, it has around 160gb iirc and is prb the biggest mod I've ever seen, ambitious beyond belief. All the circuits, all the drivers, the different cars, the handling characteristics of them, the sounds, everything, all included, sounds impossible but fucking hell it's real.
Anyway I'll stop now, good game.
Alright so F1 Challenge 99-02 is def a racing game classic and its existence is...very consumer friendly? We sure this is EA?
Fucking hell, so okay this is basically taking F1 99, 2000, 2001 and 2002 and putting them together into one single game. A Halo MCC of sorts for this series of F1 games, but working on release.
And yeah it's pretty great actually, very unique and fun to have an F1 game that covers multiple seasons of the sport. Especially in a sport as ever evolving and changing as F1.
Playing through the seasons you can see and feel the cars changing, getting faster, having more grip, corners that in 99 were more difficult you can attack with much more ease by the time you get to 02.
It's got a few things figured out better than even the newest F1 game, for once, they actually update the tracks woah. Unlike with the modern games it doesn't take years for a circuit to be updated to reflect how it is currently. Some tracks are updated in all 4 seasons included.
There's differences between Albert park in 99 and 02, Monza 01 and 02, etc...
Also the racing itself is some of the most fun in any F1 game that I've played, the AI will make mistakes and random bullshit will happen but this is accurate to the sport, looking at the results of an average race from the late 90s and early 2000s, you're lucky if less than say 6 cars don't DNF. So ofc in the game you'll constantly hear x driver is retiring, they've blown the engine.
Actually quite funny sometimes, very nice sometimes too, especially when someone in the points DNFs and that gives you an extra position, maybe an extra point, vital point.
During this era only the top 6 got points and the difference between 2nd and 1st was 4 points which was A LOT back then. It is a bit annoying coming from newer games where you can finish 7th and go 6 points thats pretty good to fuck 7th? damn no points ig but in the championship overall it closes everything up and suddenly you'll be fighting much more aggressively for every position since every point is important. How important you might ask? Well in my 2002 season I won the championship by a single point over Schumacher.
Mechanical issues can happen to you too, I had my 2001 championship fight pretty much ended after a collision resulted in my car stopping half a lap later, making me lose points that would have helped me keep the fight going in the final rounds. Could I have restarted? Sure, would that have been any fun? Agh prb not.
After you play F1 games as much as me, you get bored and tired of just putting the difficulty to where you win every race. Sometimes being in a midfield car fighting for points and the occasional podium is more fun. The 99 season was spent in a mediocre Benetton, taking me to a distant third in the championship with 2 wins and quite a few podiums. My 2000 season went much better, going with the BMW Williams team and getting the championship wrapped up before the last race due to my opponent having a mechanical issue while leading the USA grand prix, gifting me the win and the championship.
In 2001 I decided to go with McClaren and things didn't go very well, while I did take the fight to Schumacher for the first half of the season, retirements and bad results ultimately made me a very distant 2nd in the championship (skill issue).
2002 was redemption time, going back to Williams and winning the championship by 1 point as noted earlier, trading wins left and right with Schumacher, getting 8/17 wins, scoring points in all but 2 races where I DNF'd. It was the hardest of the seasons despite being in the 2nd best car, the reason it was so hard was because well the Ferrari that year was one of the most dominant cars in history. IRL Michael Schumacher was on another galaxy compared to everyone else, getting a top 3 result in every single race of the season, having the championship won with 6 races to go and him alone having more points than all the other teams. It is the perfect season, only thing that comes close would be perhaps Max Verstappens current season if he keeps it up (already won 10/12 races, 8 in a row, got 2nd in the other 2).
So yeah the ferrari was always on my tail and closing in and sometimes it was just as much about outsmarting the opponents as outracing them, a good tactic is to try and slow down the car behind so others close in, if they try an overtake and you defend properly they might make a mistake, others overtake and now you can pick up the pace more.
Your mistakes are also punished just as hard, go off track, hit someone, put yourself in a bad situation and you could lose your front wing, rear wing, maybe even one of your tires lol. I had a bit of a dramatic Monaco GP in the 99 season where I fucked up my front wing but since there were only 2 laps remaining I decided to stick it out and try to defend, Monaco is known for being a very hard circuit to drive and also overtake which was crucial to me getting the win despite my car not being able to take a fucking turn to save its life.
Though this game's driving actually is the most fun for Monaco, very smooth, very precise but still punishing, easy to go in with too much speed and end up understeering into a wall but when things go right it's one of the most satisfying things to get that one perfect lap.
Yeah agh I think I've been rambling on enough, this game is great, fun driving model, has that early 2000s racing game charm, interesting for F1 history nuts like me, nice progression over the 4 seasons. Cool seeing all these great drivers in their prime, and new drivers come in that ended up greats of the sport themselves (Kimi, Button). If you want an old racing game to spend 30+ hours in or are interested in an F1 game that covers older seasons, go for it.
Also should mention there's a huge ass mod for this game that puts in EVERY season, it has around 160gb iirc and is prb the biggest mod I've ever seen, ambitious beyond belief. All the circuits, all the drivers, the different cars, the handling characteristics of them, the sounds, everything, all included, sounds impossible but fucking hell it's real.
Anyway I'll stop now, good game.