Formula 1 97: Гонка за лицензию

the 1997 videogame

Formula 1 97 (known as Formula 1 Championship Edition in North America) is a racing video game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Psygnosis for PlayStation and Microsoft Windows. It is the sequel to the 1996 video game Formula 1 and was based on the 1997 Formula One World Championship. This was the last Formula One game to be made by the Bizarre Creations team, who moved on to create the successful Metropolis Street Racer for the Dreamcast and Project Gotham Racing for the Xbox.

Formula 1 97 includes all the tracks from the F1 season of 1997 season, including the cancelled Portuguese Grand Prix circuit. Drivers are included with the exception of Williams F1 driver Jacques Villeneuve, who is missing due to copyright issues, and the MasterCard Lola duo of Ricardo Rosset and Vincenzo Sospiri, whose team folded after failing to qualify for the opening race of the season. The game includes a Grand Prix mode, which was designed to be technical and realistic, and an arcade mode, which was aimed towards a broader audience. Formula 1 97 supports two player racing through a split screen.

Formula 1 97 was developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Psygnosis. It uses the same game engine as the original Formula 1. Shortly after the initial release, Psygnosis announced that due to a licensing disagreement with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, Formula One Administration Ltd, and Giss Licensing BV, Formula 1 97 would be repackaged and re released with a different title and without the official Formula One logos.

Formula 1 97 was a best seller in the UK. In August 1998, the game's PlayStation version received a "Platinum" sales award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD), indicating sales of at least 200,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Reviews for Formula 1 97 were overwhelmingly positive. IGN stated the game is a "significant jump" from Formula 1. Critics laid the most praise on the controls in the Grand Prix mode, commenting that they are maximally accurate, realistic, and challenging yet fair and rewarding.

The game was hit by legal wranglings with the FIA (Formula One's governing body) objecting to the use of the FIA logo on the game's packaging. The game was withdrawn from shops six weeks after its release. It was re released without the offending logo, but the FIA were still unhappy. However, the FIA lost the court case, and the game continued to be sold without the logo. Another problem faced was the use of the name and image of then Williams F1 driver Jacques Villeneuve, after he had copyrighted both. The game shows a silhouette for the driver's image. Murray Walker refers to him as "Williams Numberone" or "The Canadian", however on the game menu, they list him as Driverone Williams; this problem is easily sidestepped by the addition of a driver name edit function. The game also has unused voice clips for Jacques Villeneuve, that can be found via hacking methods. This idea proved popular and re appeared in Formula 1 98, but was not used for any of the following games. The driver name edit function is also used to enter codes to unlock the Aida, Adelaide, Silverstone (1960s look), a mirrored version of the original game's bonus track, and others, such as raining frogs and the cars having the ability to hover. All alcohol and tobacco sponsors are censored, for example trackside adverts saying Faster instead of Fosters, since such advertisements were illegal in some countries.