In a style defined by earlier Ratbag releases like Dirt Track Racing and Dirt Track Racing: Sprint Cars, Leadfoot provides off-road racing in more than 180 events, with stadium-lite and 4×4 modified machines. With full control including head-up displays, cockpit jitters, tire wear, handling options, and a choice of automatic or manual transmissions, you’ll slide, twist, jump, and jar your way through 15 series races against computer-controlled opponents in single-player mode, or against up to ten humans via a LAN or the Internet.
Gameplay modes include a fully configurable Quick Race with selections for track, number and AI rating of opponents, and vehicle. In Career mode, you begin as an amateur driver with designs on being world champion by earning and using prize money to continually upgrade your vehicle as you work through various events. Realism settings, sponsorships, practice, income, damage, repairs, and tuning (wheels, camber, tires, braking, steering, suspension, drive train, and more) all play a part in Career mode.
Two replay features (single-player only) that offer chances to learn tracks and study techniques include a limited instant replay during the race and a full saved replay after the fact. Standard VCR replay options include reverse, pause, advance frame, slow motion, fast forward, jump to start or end, and play. A high-score section keeps track of season earnings by vehicle class, as well as fastest lap times.
The only big novelty in Stadium Offroad Racing is the fact that the old monotonous tracks had been replaced with tracks resembling those in Motocross Madness. This might sound interesting, but you’ll still have the feeling you are playing just another DTR add-on pack. You’ll get to drive an offroad car and race on muddy, indoor tracks with a lot of bends, bumps and puddles… supercross on four wheels.
You will have a chance to prove your driving skills in two types of cars: Super lights and Sports Trucks, each of which features several different models. The first group consists of light buggy/kart vehicles, which have lower maximum speed, different handling and acceleration than the pick-ups from the second class.
Of course, if you decide to build your career step by step and work your way through the championships, you’ll have to start off with the weakest buggy and hope you’re your good driving skills will earn you some money. The money you earn will be spent on repairs and purchasing better machines. Sponsors like K&N Filters, Kirkey Seats, Mopar or Fibertec may occasionally offer you some money to advertise them, but you have to be really good to make some money that way. This isn’t as easy as it seems, as your opponents drive pretty well. The control system is fairly simple and comes down to using the cursor keys, but if you want to achieve a good position, you will really have to know your car, the track and concentrate heavily on each bend… I didn’t take time to test the easiest skill level, but I can tell you that the opponents can be rather troublesome on the medium setting. The game also features settings for vehicle handling verisimilitude, and you can also tweak up a bunch of other little things in the garage.
All in all, even though this is an older game it is fun to play and fairly easy to obtain a copy on eBay or Amazon as I did (About $7.00 with shipping). It plays well on Win 7 64 bit. You can find downloadable tracks/cars that are from DTR that will work in this game too.
I enjoyed the game and the price was good. It came to me in very good shape. I found a few other fixes for it on-line, since it is an abandoned game, Rat Bag is no longer in business, there are patches available to take care of having to load the CD every time you play, and may other little tweaks.
The driving is pretty good. For an older game the physics are not bad at all. I like the fact that you can slide the trucks around the truck, jump them, and some experience driving them does make you better. It’s a lot of entertainment for just a few bucks.
Links:
EBAY – AMAZON
Team VLR open download directory: (DTR, Leadfoot, skins and more)
http://www.teamvlr.site.nfoservers.com/2014/joomlatools-files/docman-files/