24 Hours of games

Every racing gamer dreamed about racing in Le Mans, specially after playing it in the video game. And this weekend we'll see 4 competent guys that passed from gaming to reality, due to the Nissan GT Academy program: Lucas Ordoñez, the first winner, Jann Mardenborough, the guy that was too quick to run in British GT, Wolfgang Reip and Mark Shuzhitskiy, two young guns that have their credentials to run there.

But Le Mans history in video games is really older than that.

The first Le Mans game was produced in 1976, by Atari, as an arcade game. Subsequent titles were released to arcades too, but with significant improvements to the original pixel-based ones, as the example of WEC Le Mans, by Konami, with really good graphics to a game released in 1986, although the graphics limitations made all the cars have the same model.

Now in the 90s, but without forgetting the arcades, SEGA released in 1997 the game Le Mans 24, really more well detailed and with official cars included, like the 1991 LM24 winner Mazda 787B, that appeared in the first Gran Turismo game, for Playstation. Please note that most of these games didn't had the circuit, only some cars on them.

​Almost in the end of the millenium, Eutechnyx released Le Mans 24 Hours(also known as Test Drive Le Mans) to Playstation and PC. It featured the 1997 and 1998 Le Mans entrants, as well some classic cars, like the Kremer 962. It was the first I've played, and at that time I think this one would only lost to the first and second Gran Turismo games in terms of quality.

After that, in 2002, another Le Mans 24 Hours game was released by Infogrames to PC and Playstation 2​, with the 1999 and 2000 Le Mans entrants, as well the 1999 Petit Le Mans cars, with more than 70 cars on total, and with good graphics and physics. Other one that I played heavily, and have my thumbs up.

And there was a thing about the Eutechnyx game and the later Infogrames game: both featured the whole Le Mans circuit, as well the 24 hours-race, with the option to choose the length of the race from 12 minutes to 24 hours, and with proper day-to-night-to-day transitions, concepts that would be present in games like the subsequent Gran Turismo games, Forza Motorsport games and Race Driver: GRID, and became an integral part of any game that has the Le Mans 24 Hours on it.

​OWNER NOTE:

As the 2002 Infogrames game was the only one that had a Save option during the 24 Hour race, I recomend you to try all the others having friends with you to share the driving period, or only if you're mad enough to try it alone for 24 hours non-stop.

And outside the oficially released ones, versions of La Sarthe and Le Mans cars exist for games like F1 Challenge, rFactor, GTR2, GTR Evolution and many others, and with some good quality on it.

So, after this gaming journey I'll play a little, while the race doesn't start. Nice race, and if so, nice play for everyone.

Photo: Arcade Museum