Sprint Cars: The Road to Knoxville

by THQ

Product Features

• Race as or against NASCAR driver Tony Stewart's #20
• 20 of the toughest tracks
• Play in single player mode or engage in 2 player split screen Arcade mode

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000FNY4S6
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches ; 5 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: January 29, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,615 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #59 in Video Games > PlayStation 2 > Racing

Product Description

Racing at speeds over 170 MPH on dirt, this is the proving ground for NASCAR drivers. Shoulder to shoulder sprint car racing makes for spectacular crashes, and white-knuckle driving. Start as a small town star and work your way up through the ranks to become a national legend.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Online Leaderboard for Posting your best lap times(uses Passwords)!, August 11, 2006

By 

Poker Face (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Sprint Cars: The Road to Knoxville (Video Game)

INTRO:
This game is the sequel to the much better Saturday Night Speedway PS2 game(which was the sequel to World of Outlaws:Sprint Cars 2002-also,on PS2).All three games use virtually the SAME game engine.However,Saturday Night Speedway(S.N.S.) has more colorful cars(though fewer cars to choose from),more detailed tracks and slightly better graphics,as well as a Championship mode that lets you save after any race,and has a more even(difficulty-wise) career mode(though they both are set up exactly the same way,and both provide enough overall challenge).

Do NOT buy this game unless you already tried Saturday Night Speedway and enjoyed it,or you like to play the Time Trial mode,(like in Toca Race Driver 2 and 3) and POST your Passwords to an Online Leaderboard(sprintcarsthegame).Just regular dialup is needed to post them.I'm only addicted to the time trial mode because you get a password that you can enter online at (sprintcarsthegame) and compare your times with everyone else.You can't actually race online,though.

Take one look at the online leaderboard,and you'll see why I'm hooked.You can organize it in so many ways,it's amazing.The only thing it's missing is what country everyone's from.All you do is enter in the 10 digit password(and your user name) and it automatically knows what game system you used(PS2 or Pc).

IMPORTANT LEADERBOARD NOTE:Currently(August 24,2006),for some reason,if you want to search for the posted lap times by a specific User Name on this Online Leaderboard,you must put a single apostrophe,both in front of and after the user name you're searching for in the User Name box.For example: 'Poker Face'
If you just type in the user name(Poker Face or whatever),without the apostrophe's,you'll usually get an error message.It wasn't like this when it first appeared online,so maybe someone is trying to hack into the site.That's why sometimes when you post your password,it now shows you a syntax error page,rather than going to a page that shows all your previous posted lap times.The passwords you enter will still be saved to the site's Leaderboard,even if you see the syntax error page(if you enter that same password again it will say don't enter the same password,so that's how you can quickly tell it was accepted previously).However,if you do get sent to the syntax error page(eventually they'll probably fix it), just go back to the previous page and click Leaderboard.Then you can search as usual for various track times,etc.Seems complicated,but this only recently started happening,and everything still works anyway.

If you like arcade style racing games(though both games allow lots of tuning choices), but have NO desire to post your best lap times to the online leaderboard,then you should just buy Saturday Night Speedway(has 19 tracks-only 5 of which are not in the Sprint Car game).Saturday Night Speedway only has Pro Stock,Midget and Late Model car classes,but the cars are more colorful,and all the modes(except for time trial)are better than the Sprint Cars:Road to Knoxville game!It has 5 tracks that Sprint Cars doesn't have and it has all the same 6 fantasy tracks(they only changed the track names) in better color!Sprint Cars:Road to Knoxville has 21 tracks,but only 7 of them(all ovals) are NOT in the Saturday Night Speedway game(most of the track names were changed,so don't be fooled).

Both games have a bumper and OK cockpit view,but the two behind and above the car views are CLOSER and thus better in the S.N.S. game, than those same views in the Sprint Car game.So again,S.N.S. is the winner.The extra 6 vehicles(both TRUCK vehicles are easy to win with,even from last place-so useless) are OK(but no cockpit view is available for them), but if you have an Action Replay cheat device,use the online codes to unlock these bonus vehicles right away, like I did.Otherwise you have to win many careers and a Championship mode that doesn't let you save after you finish any of the 15 races-how Dumb!

So if you haven't played Saturday Night Speedway,get it instead!It's a fun arcade racer and if you enter your name as mudeater (all in lower case) in the career mode,it will unlock eveything in the game.There's no such code for the Sprint Car game as of yet(so just use the Action Replay codes-only the Infinite Cash code DOESN"T seem to work at the moment).

I absolutely LOVE the FAST loading of both games!!!!It takes only about 35 seconds to choose your car and track and start racing.What a pleasure not to have to stare at a loading screen for what seems like several minutes for Ea's Nascar games,etc.

Only in the Sprint Cars game can you smash into the other cars and get them ANGRY(similar to Nascar 2004,but less aggressive).The Modifieds and 3/4 Midgets drive slower,so they're less exciting than the slippery and faster winged Sprint cars,but since all the Cpu cars are soft to bump into,it takes a lot of bumping and banging before you damage your tires or engine etc.(or you could turn Off the damage if you want-though NOT in career mode).The Sprint cars are the hardest to drive(especially in midddle or hardest level of difficulty,so extra tuning will be required to avoid spinouts),and actually frustrate me too often.The Midgets in the S.N.S. game go only a little slower than the other games Winged Sprint cars, but are easier to control, and thus more enjoyable overall.Again Saturday Night Speedway is the better game!

NOTES:
-Only Tony Stewart's Bass Master Sprint CAR is in the game,NOT Tony Stewart himself!
-You CAN'T actually race ONLINE.You can only post your best lap times online,with a password.
-Skip ahead to the SUMMARY at the end of this review if you don't care to read about every little detail this average game has.


PRESENTATION: 5.5/10
-Enough things are unlocked from beginning,though you still need to unlock the 6 bonus fantasy tracks and all the 6 bonus vehicles(Hovercraft-slow but lots of fun flipping and bumping),police car(fast),pickup truck, cab front of truck(that's used to haul long trailers-not in game),dune buggy,golf cart(slow and dull)Win career mode several times and Championship mode to unlock them.

-Not very deep game actually,but it's got the basic modes at least and you can post your best time trial lap times to online leaderboard.

-Has very FAST loading!!!! So,it's great for quick pick up and play racing.This is why budget racers with average graphics can sometimes be more fun than the more elaborate racing games,with the long loading times that come with their better graphics.

-Has effective short Tutorial,explaining drafting and powerslides.

-Arcade single race mode lets you choose whether to race in afternoon,evening or night.Also race format:either brief(no heats and just main race),or full.Also,whether the race length(# laps)is:short(about 4 laps),medium(about 10-20),or long(about 30 laps).Note:I think the # of laps sometimes varies for each class or difficulty level? Not sure yet.

-Has 40 week,multiple season Career mode(you CAN save after each race) where you buy cars then upgrade,repair (use your cash) and tune them.Also can get sponsor offers,etc.

-Has championship mode where you race on 15 tracks,for the most points,in a specific class(but MAJOR FLAW is that you CAN't save in the middle of it,so you must finish all 15 races which makes it basically useless for short term play.

-Has practice mode.Just you on the track.

-Has 2 player horizontal split screen multi-player mode.

-Has 21 tracks(6 have to be unlocked,by winning classes in career mode-but luckily the Knoxville track is
available from the start).The 15 tracks that are unlocked from the beginning are as follows:Super Motoplex (same as Bristol in S.N.S. game);Huset's Speedway;Eldora,Ash Hollows (same as Terre Haute track in S.N.S. game);Dosrada;Pickenback;Turnpike 42;Williams Grove;Knoxville;Brite Peak (same as I-55 in S.N.S.game);Tri State Fairgrounds (same as Lowes Motor Speedway in S.N.S game);Sea-Belle;Dodge City;Steer Plains and Moose Head Speedway.

It's dumb that in the Arcade single race mode you can't enter your name,so if you set a best lap it saves it under the driver's name and not yours.So,you'll probably forget which best laps are yours.However,if you race in the Time Trial,Career or Championship mode,it DOES let you enter your name and still saves your best lap times to the games Hall of Fame records tables.However,in the Time Trial mode,you must remember to manually Save(since the Auto-Save feature isn't activated in Time Trial mode)after you get your best lap password,by going to the Options menu and choosing Save options-then Save.The Saturday Night Speedway game is better because it let's you save all your best lap times under your user name,in all the modes.


GRAPHICS: 5.5/10
Everythings almost identical to Saturday Night Speedway(PS2),so the graphics are good enough(though washed out colors and less backgrond details)for a budget game and the framerate seems fine(no slowdown yet,not even in 2 player multi-player mode).

-It's possible that the framerate may only be 30 frames per second,because Saturday Night Speedway is smoother(so maybe it's 60 frames a second?),but I'm not sure.

-Good that can leave black marks on walls that stay for whole race,as well as skid marks or mud lines on the track.

-Shows some ok blurring effect to represent speed in all views,except for the cockpit view.However,it's basically done so they can blur everything and show you less detail.Rather annoying actually.Saturday Night Speedway has NO blurring effect,and I prefer it that way!

-Though the cars get damaged,you can't really tell... Read more ›

3.0 out of 5 stars I HAVE TO GET THE HANG OF THIS GAME...., January 9, 2008

By 

Diane Galante (MIDDLETOWN, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sprint Cars: The Road to Knoxville (Video Game)

I GOT THIS FOR MY BOYFRIEND AND HE FOUND THIS GAME SORT OF TOUGH, HE CAN'T SEEM TO GET THE HANG OF IT. BUT HE'S 44 YEARS OLD & HE NEEDS TO GET HIS 14 YEAR OLD SON TO HELP HIM AND SHOW HIM HOW TO PLAY IT. HE DOES LOVE SPRINT CAR RACING AND HE WILL HOPEFULLY REVIEW IT HIGHER AFTER HE LEARNS HOW TO PLAY IT...

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a PS2 game that captures the essence of powersliding!!, September 29, 2007

By 

SneakerGuy (USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Sprint Cars: The Road to Knoxville (Video Game)

Best racing game ever.

Finally a PS2 game that captures the essence of powersliding
on short dirt tracks. I play the midgets all the time - smaller
cars allow for 4 wide racing and no big wing obstructing view.
Get a steering wheel super great driving,

Difficulty - just right - I'm a casual gamer - fun but not aggravating.
many settings to adjust.

Graphics - solid never frame rate problems. Sound good.

bargain price my new favorite game