New Star GP from the creators of New Star Manager is coming to Steam soon.
I’m not sure I would say arcade racing games are having a renaissance these days but there are definitely some great games to choose from like Circuit Superstars and more recently Exo Rally Championship. That number will increase by one later this year with the release of New Star GP, a retro racing game from the days of Prost, Senna and Schumacher.
The first thing that caught my eye was the New Star GP’s deceptively retro graphics. I’ve played a lot of old-school racing games and immediately thought of Payrus’ Indianapolis 500 (which, ironically, was considered a major step forward between racing games at the time). Arcade and “realistic” simulators (though I don’t remember playing them as such) when I saw this new trailer. It’s bright, it’s colorful, it looks fast, and the Days of Thunder style makes it clear that realism isn’t really an issue here.
In addition to the stylized retro look, New Star GP will also show cars and races from years past. When the game comes out in Early Access, it will feature a career mode and a championship mode featuring 56 individual races around the world including Brisbane, Quebec and Tokyo. The single-player career mode will take players back to the 1980s and 1990s, but more decades are planned during early access, along with new cars, tracks and track layouts, while the championship mode offers five different championships to compete in alone or in shared form can. Screen multiplayer with up to four people.
While New Star GP is clearly an arcade racing game, developer New Star – whose previous game, the soccer simulator New Star Manager, was described to me as “pretty brilliant” by our soccer expert Rich Stanton – also promises real game depth: “The anyone can do it.” Get behind the wheel and be successful, but those who really want to master the game will appreciate the choice and wear of the tires, the reliability of the components, avoiding opponents, loading fuel and even the want to use the strategy of refueling wells. Anything can happen in racing, from catastrophic component failures and dynamic weather changes to blowouts and multiple car pile-ups.
Interestingly, New Star GP isn’t expected to stay in Early Access for very long: the developers estimate it will only last two to four months, although that’s not set in stone.
My interest in racing games has waned over the years, but I can’t wait to try New Star GP. I hope it fills a very specific void in my heart: a game of throwing yourself in and giving it your all, with just enough fidelity that if I manage to finish a race while mine, I feel supremely competent tires still touch the track. We’ll see what happens: New Star GP doesn’t have an exact launch date yet, but it’s scheduled to hit Steam in a couple of weeks.