GS News recently spoke with Car & Driver editorial staffer Don Schroeder to find out about his magazine's involvement in Activision's upcoming PlayStation racer, Car & Driver Presents Grand Tour Racing '98.

　　Here's what he had to say.

　　Q: What were your first impressions of the game?

　　A: I think the thing that I noticed first off was how the cars reacted dynamically. I was kind of amused by that, how they go over hills and dales and take corners. A lot of that stuff is really neat and realistic. I liked the way they do things cars do out in the real world, and I don't see that in very many car games out there. I think that GTR's cars' characteristics are pretty impressive.

　　Q: You're probably much more able than someone like me - who drives a Mercury Topaz - to explain how the cars in the game are so realistic. What impressed you most about the realism?

　　A: When the cars would go up hills I noticed the suspension unloaded and the rear end would start to come around a bit, for example. That's typical of a car when you're driving aggressively. Another example is if you do the equivalent of flooring the car in reverse, the car would kind of spin around slightly, and that's something that a normal car would also do. The way the cars would crash and go into disastrous spins is another. I like those realistic effects. It seems to me visually that that's pretty close to what happens in a real car.

　　Q: How do you think it compares to other driving games out there on the market?

　　A: Well, the only one I've played is Need & Speed by Road & Track, which is obviously one of our competitors. There are some very big differences there. I'll admit that I liked the game's internal realism. I was impressed by the fact that, for example, it looked like the inside of a corvette when you're inside of a corvette. From a driving standpoint however, I didn't see the effects that I was seeing on environments and tracks. One of the classes is a sports car class, and obviously we're very heavily involved in that here at Car & Driver. We test a lot of sports cars and make sure we look at them very closely. And they also have an Indy Car class, which is kind of similar to the Formula 1 class overseas. Those are the most sophisticated cars we have in the States. We've actually driven some of those cars, and they're very different from just about any other car that you could possibly think of, particularly in the way they handle. So we were able to tell them that, too.

　　Q: Have you been playing the game around the office much?

　　A: We've had it around the office for a couple of weeks and a whole bunch of us were playing it in our boss' office. It was a good thing that he wasn't around because it probably would've driven him crazy.

　　Q: You've been playing a lot of the two-player mode?

　　A: Yeah, and I hate to admit it, but we'd often try crashing into each other to see what would happen.

　　Q: Well, you have to test out the rides. You can't really do that in real life.

　　A: We would rather avoid doing that at Car & Driver, although that sometimes happens.

　　For further info, screenshots, and video footage of Car & Driver Presents Grand Tour Racing '98, be sure and check out our preview of the game.