It is April 2000, when I walked with my father into the local computer store. To collect our new computer, a Pentium 3 with 128MB, a Radeon ATI 256 graphics card and an IDE disk with 40GB! In those days, companies offered a PC plan where employees could buy computers with discount. In that shop, there it was, the holy grail for every 10 year old in 2000 who is an absolute Formula One fan. F1 2000 from EA Sports, a beautiful and shiny big box with all the Teams, Circuit and drivers from 2000 in it. Able to simulate the race at Monza with Jos Verstappen only to win it in game! This is 25 years ago and that is hard to believe!
To be honest, F1 2000 was one of the worst Formula One games that appeared for the PC. In November that year, F1 Championship Season 2000 was released by EA as well. This was a huge improvement compared to F1 2000. However, that game never had the charm of the original one. I was never been flattered by F12000 CS, not back then not later when I revisited the game a couple of times.
In my memory, it was always that Saturday evening after dinner I would play F12000 with some chips and a cola. Enjoying racing in the Arrows A21 as teammate of Jos Verstappen. Of course, crashing and see how much cars you could destroy was also part of it. Racing in Monaco with Arrows and winning the race. Having Allard Kalff commenting during the race was and still is priceless. It was like how it was on the television back in the days.
It was also the first steps in my modding days. I started to just random change numbers in the .PLR files. There was also Grand Prix 3, though I was a keyboard player so Grand Prix 3 was a no go for me. F1 2000 I could just easily play on the keyboard. There is another memory I have about that era. We had cable internet as one of the few over here. Searching primitively on internet for new downloads for the game was a pure gem! I still remember the website F1gamer.com – F12000downloads.nl and BHmotorsports.com because of it! Yes, 25 years ago, sometimes I miss those silly days.
