TOCA Touring Car Championship

1997 video game

TOCA: Touring Car Championship (called TOCA Championship Racing in North America) is a 3D racing video game licensed by series organisers TOCA, and developed and published by Codemasters for the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows platforms in 1997 1998. It was re released by Codemasters for the Game Boy Color in 2000. It was the first entry in the eponymous series and was followed by TOCA 2 Touring Cars in 1998. The player takes control of a driver who races for one of the eight works teams that contested the 1997 British Touring Car Championship against fifteen AI competitors on one of the nine championship circuits. A championship mode is available for players with the objective of earning points to continue competing and unlocking new features. Development of the game began in 1996 and continued for the next eighteen months during which Codemasters worked closely with the British Touring Car Championship's organiser TOCA to faithfully recreate the series in the virtual world. The game features former racing driver Tiff Needell as the commentator. Reception was generally positive with critics directing their praise at the gameplay and the excitement it gave the player. The game was a commercial success with 600,000 copies sold in Europe in the first six months of its release and was ranked third in the United Kingdom video game charts.

The player races against fifteen AI competitors for one of the eight work teams (each team has two drivers who compete for them). They participate on one of the nine circuits that feature in the championship. The vehicles in the game are super touring cars for which the player can select the gearbox setting to either automatic or manual. Three types of views can be accessed: a close up back end view remotely from the car, a perspective from the engine compartment, and an internal view from the passenger compartment. Selecting a car places the player in the position of the first named driver for each team. That driver's name would then not appear in the race, and the player's name would appear instead. Multiplayer allows up to two players on the PlayStation version or eight players on the PC version to complete in either split screen or LAN. A single race allows the player to compete with a predefined car and circuit. The player can set the number of laps, the weather and the difficulty level, and may decide to play the game in multi player, whereby all participants can choose to grant a speed boost to the losing player. At the beginning of the game, only two circuits are available; the others are unlocked by progressing in championship mode. Time trial consists of the player recording the fastest possible lap time with that person selecting weather conditions. Once a reference time has been established, a phantom car is materialised, prompting the player to further improve on the previous best lap. During the game's operating period, players could publish their lap times on Codemasters's website and compare themselves to others.

The Game Boy Color version offers a different game system, due to the technical limitations of the platform. The game displays an isometric 3D view typical of the games on the console. The championship and time trial modes are unchanged although only one car per team is entered in the race. The simple racing mode allows the player to set options that are more restricted than in the PlayStation and Windows versions. All circuits in the game are unlocked from the start, without the need for the player to progress through championship mode to unlock them. The multiplayer mode offers the possibility for eight players to compete in turns.

Development of TOCA: Touring Car Championship began in 1996 by Codemasters and took eighteen months to complete. The team, led by Gavin Raeburn, consisted of twenty six programmers who worked six day weeks at the rate of fourteen hours per day during the final stages of game development. With the license from TOCA, the organiser of the British Touring Car Championship, Codemasters worked with the company to faithfully reproduce the characteristics of the championship; the names and teams of the series, cars with more or less equal capacities, and friction and collisions in the corners. The designers also represented the race cars accurately, showing the sponsors of the teams and the advertising hoardings present on each circuit. In order to realistically model the real life cars, each one was laser scanned with a precision of a quarter of a millimetre. These were textured under several conditions, depending on whether they were damaged or intact. In addition, graphic designers benefited from the topographic surveys of the Ordnance Survey, a non ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom responsible for mapping the United Kingdom, to model the circuits. These are also from different angles of view and each circuit was photographed before being modelled in 3D. Thus the game engine allows the player, like Destruction Derby, to leave the track and visit the circuit's surroundings. The game runs at a frame rate of twenty five frames per second, detailed with 3,000 polygons. In the English version, commentary is provided by the former racing driver Tiff Needell. The game was released in Europe in November 1997 with other regions following in 1998.

In the month before the game's release, Codemasters invited around forty journalists from across Europe to the Brands Hatch racing circuit in the English county of Kent. This was to introduce them to discover what the game was like and prove the realism of the simulation it contained. Thus, the journalists were able to experience the sensations on the console. Beforehand, they were driven around in BMW passenger cars by competitors of the British Formula Ford Championship and then were given the opportunity to drive several Formula Vee single seater vehicles. Then they executed slaloms in a race car while attempting not to drop a ball placed on a container that was attached to the bonnet. The journalists eventually tested TOCA Touring Car Championship under optimal simulation conditions by sitting in a bucket seat, which was near a giant television screen and a steering wheel.

At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, the PlayStation version took home a "Gold" prize for revenues above €21 million in the European Union during the previous year. The PC version was nominated for the "Best Racing Game of the Year" award at IGNs Best of 1998 Awards, which went to Powerslide.

As it was published a few months before Gran Turismo, TOCA Touring Car Championship is seen by critics as a forerunner of automotive simulation racing video games, in spite of it being judged as graphically inferior to the 1994 game Ridge Racer.