Grand Prix 3 on the Sega Dreamcast

During the years, UnracedF1 has been growing slowly but steady. With new categories added to produced more content for the website and to reach more people. Besides the Unraced F1 teams and cars there is also the section for the unraced circuits and unraced engines. Today i added a new category to the website, unraced games. Why? Back in the days I used to play f1 games on the pc, basically I was more active in the modding scene. This day I have a huge collection and passion for retro consoles. Today the first article will be about Grand Prix 3 for the Dreamcast.

Grand Prix was developed by Geoff Crammond from Microprose while Hasbro Interactive was the publisher. In June 2000 Grand Prix 3, as a successor of Grand Prix 2, was finally released. Grand Prix 3 was based on the 1998 season as the company had the license for that year. It wouldn’t take long before the add-on Grand Prix 3-2000 was published. Soon after the release, the modding scene became active like the guys from emacF1. There is still an active community for GP3 by the way.

While Grand Prix 3 was released for the PC it only took weeks before the first articles appeared of a rumoured port for the game to the Sega Dreamcast! I actually love the Dreamcast. The console was ahead of its time. I remember I played online Crazy Taxi though you needed a special network adapter for it. Probably the console was doomed when it was released as most people did not have a good and stable internet connection at that time.  We already had broadband in 2000 though it was pretty expensive at that time, compared to the 56k people.

Believe it or not, there was never an attempt made, as far as i know, to port Grand Prix 2 to one of the fifth generation consoles. It would be suitable for the PlayStation and perhaps even for the Nintendo64.  The news that an port would be made for the Dreamcast was a dream coming trough for a lot of F1 nuts that’s used to have a gaming console. There were obviously a lot of F1 games already released. Most of them were arcade-ish type of games which isn’t really exciting. The best F1 game i have on my retro consoles is probably F1 1997 for the PS1.

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In the 2000 December issue of Dreamcast Monthly the cover was dedicated to the Grand Prix 3 port to the Dreamcast. It was even titled as an exclusive! However, in the article were no screenshots of the game to be seen, they used screenshots from the PC version of the game. The same counts for an Italian magazine that published an article as well about Grand Prix 3 for the Dreamcast. Infogrames would take the lead to bring the game to the Dreamcast.  The company promised the game would be even more exciting and have more depth than the PC version.

As mentioned already an Italian magazine had a two page big article about Grand Prix 3. They actually said in the article that the game was already on a stage of 80%. Which would mean that there would be at least a playable alpha version of the game. Spokesmen of Hasbro Interactive Jayson Hill said that the name was not 100% sure yet though If you read between the lines it was clear the game would be released. The screenshots used in the Italian article are also from the PC version.

The biggest question which has never been answered would there be a multiplayer option for Grand Prix 3? During the late 90s, early 00s there were no that much games that allowed you to play against or with others worldwide. The Dreamcast had the ability. How great would it be if you could race with friends on a Friday evening? Simulating a real race.

Sadly Grand Prix 3 never made it to a release on the Dreamcast. The last mention was around February 2001 stating that the game would be released in the spring of 2001. While Sega decided to quit with the Dreamcast short after it was clear the game would never come. Is there a playable ROM somewhere? Well i assume there is as the game was on 80% development.  Perhaps it was simply too much effort to make a decent port of Grand Prix 3 as well. Sadly, we will never know.

Recently Microprose became active again for now only on Facebook and planning a lot of games. Perhaps Grand Prix 5, if Geoff Crammond is willing, will be appear?