In 2021, EA Sports purchased Codemasters and re-acquired again the rights to design Formula One games. Indeed, re-acquired because EA Sports is well known by a lot of gamers from the past. In 2000, the company published their first F1 2000. The game was buggy and after a couple of patches they started working on F1 Championship Season 2000 which was a significant upgrade. However, what many don’t know is that they started working on the game based on the 1999 season. In the early stages, the screenshots of their Work in Progress that were shared were with 1999 liveries on it. Eventually, they switched to the 2000 season. Time to head back 25 years ago when EA Sports was a complete different company as it is today.
At the time, EA Sports acquired several rights for Formula One seasons there were more gaming studio’s working on Formula One games. Well known is Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix games by Microprose. His last game was Grand Prix 4 based on the 2002 season. Sadly, it would be the last Grand Prix game. The rights for 2003 and onwards were in the hands of EA. There were more companies however such as Ubisoft, Lankhorn and Psygnosis who developed in the past Formula One games.
You may ask yourself why do you write even about this, and how are you sure they worked on the 1999 season? Simple, the first screenshots that were shared with us were with 1999 cars. You could see the Minardi, McLaren, Ferrari, Jordan and Benetton. At that time in Autosport an advertisement appeared where EA was looking for a product manager for F1 and Superbike. Published in late January 2000, in the banner there were only 1999 cars not 2000. I also recall reading in an old gaming magazine, which I lost, that EA was working on a 1999 and 2000 season. Going even deeper, if you happen to own the version or the BETA for F1 2000 you had some of the data in it as well. It also had the interesting looking Arrows A21 in it by the way.
It is also a generation thing. As well, being a fanatic stuck in the past. I recall we started the search for the files in 2003 on Racesimulations.com, similar happened I believe also at racesimcentral.net. We never manage to find the files. Even contacting EA sports, although they never replied to us even in those days. Twenty-five years later, it still is going through my mind why the 1999 season was abandoned. Well, I now believe that they never abandoned the 1999 season. I only came recently to that.
While F1 2000 was released in March 2000 and F1 Championship Season 2000 in December there was another game in development. This was EA’s F1 Manager. While the game, in a later stadium, was also sold as F1 Manager 2001, this game originally was released in October 2000. The game was based on the 1999 season. If you have ever played the game, it is F1 2000 though you can’t race. What you can do is follow the races live as if you’re the team manager of Minardi. When you look at the cars and the physics, they seem to be dangerously close to the original designs that were shown in February 2000.
I only recently saw this when i played both games on my Windows 98 gaming machine. I do believe now that EA did chose to abandon the 1999 game for what it was at that moment in late February 2000 to focus on a 2000 season game. As they had the license for the previous season, a game almost complete, I believe they came up with the Manager game. Yes, it was buggy as well though I believe it is what has happened. It doesn’t mean that I would have loved to see it still as a apart game.
