Back in 1996 I did spot a GP2 review from a local pc magazine , were it scored 96/100 points. As a huge F1fan, I had to immediately find and buy it. Loved every minute playing it and so I started looking for news and updates for the game and found some.
Then came the announcement that GP3 is coming. It was year 2000 and I was at highschool.
I counted days when it would get released and one day I walked pass my local pc-gamestore and there I saw it on the window, I immediately called my dad (with my super cool cellphone Nokia 3310) to go and buy it.
That game felt like a dream come true, I loved playing it and learned some modding etc.
GP32000 I missed totally, found out about it through gpgames, but it wasn't that big thing as GP4 was announced, I followed gp4 wip-progress closely abd got my copy of gp4 a month earlier than most of the people (17th may 2002).
GP4 wasn't perfect, but it was as close as it could get. Real individual 3d carshapes for every car/team, real gps-based tracks etc.
I started posting here on this forum and looking for updates to gp4. There were so many good sites back in the day (gpgames, gp4italia, drivingitalia,m4driving, racesimulations, simracingworld,gpx.it,gp4gamers.nl etc. Some I have unfortunately forgotten
(( )and updates arrived every minute.
Long time it seemed impossible to edit gp4 carshapes and people were getting desperate already, but finally it became true thanks to tools like gp4genius, gp4editor,zmodeler and new carshapes started slowly arrive, some modders did however get fedup with damagemodel (like Emac/Ralph Hummerich) and did not do cars anymore for gp4.
2002 Few carshapes/textures were made by guys gp4heroes like Nicola Acciarri, Bojan Tarticchio, Wai Keen Lam, Erwin Maliepaard, Duco Lammers, Guyon Waltmans, Matt Schroeder, Erik Van Leuween.
A bit Later Viper (later known as Enzozj)/CTDP started converting ctdp-cars familiar from f12002 to gp4, Ferrari f2002 was first highly detailed car to be done for gp4, I remember the filesize of package being 11MB and that day it was huge as there was no fast internet (dsl,adsl etc.) So you went to internet through your phoneline and it took several hours to download just that one 11mb file!!! Finally got the car and it was superb, gp4 was finally getting perfect and 2003 things only got better new highquality models and textures were arriving from several different authors, every day new files arrived, it was the golden years of gp4.
So gp4 was close to a perfect, only thing missing was track editing being possible, Paul Hoad tried it but he stopped and we seemed to be doomed, but finally it became possible thankd to Lo2k and people who helped him. Slowly new tracks started arriving, first edits were small like small edit to Montreal track by Ricardo Lampert, but soon scracth made and hugely modified tracks started coming from various authors (like example Bahrain, Nurburgring, Magny Cours, Monaco,Hockenheim,Shanghai etc.) And gp4 was finally perfect.
Still today, it's perfect. The best game there is, graphically still looks as good as codemaster games. As years go by modders have gone and new modders have arrived, quality of the work hasn't dropped, in fact as tools have developped, the quality of the cars/textures have arisen to huge standards. Today we don't have many modders left, but still today updates come and hopefully for years to come as I intend to play/edit this game as long as I can.
GP4 for me, is more than just a game it's part of my every day life (this site comes among it).