Geoff Crammond's GP2 was a fantastic game. It built upon the foundation of WGP1 and brought very good 3D graphics for a DOS game, and even had an SVGA mode that only the absolute top PCs of the time could make use of. 2 years after its release came GP3, and expectations were high, however...
Geoff Crammond/MicroProse did not quite deliver. It was still the best modern F1 game of the time but that spoke more about the competition. There were some welcomed updates but not as many improvements as expected. The 3D engine was very limited and a subjectively small improvement in the 2 years since its predecessor, with a shared shape for all chassis and limited modding scalability due to very firm poly count limits. It was again a CPU-demanding game but this time, there was a good reason, and let's give it a new paragraph for the positive piece...
The weather system! Oh, it was so good. You could have rain at one part of the track and dry tarmac at another. It progressed so well, either a developing wet area or a drying line. The circuits had good art direction with eye-popping colors and textures, and precise geometry made driving Hockenheim, Suzuka, and Monaco, a delight.
Another area keeping the great building blocks from its predecessor was the menu. Great photographs, extremely in-depth setup tuning options, and a very atmospheric opening. You just didn't hit Enter to skip it!
But back to reality, the game was the best modern F1 game at the time but also underwhelmed fans. There were no real alternatives until 1999 but even then, no game could fully stand on its own. For PC owners, it was GP3 and F1 World Grand Prix (of the same family of games released on the N64 and PS1).
GP3 did not age as well as GP2 and its Grand Prix 3 2000 Season released in 2001 is "just nice." The manual provides a good read, not as good as GP2's, but still a good read. The United States was graced with a bland cover while S. America, Europe and Japan had the red motif with the cover featuring a Ferrari and a McLaren in the rain.
To run the game on modern machinery, you must look up directions on pcgamingwiki or archivedotorg.
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