I used to work in an arcade room that had about 50 game simulators, those were the old days when kids would steal their parents silver coins to skip school and play pac man We used to threaten to call the police because they would not leave when closing time came. it was a busy place. One thing I noticed is some people are really had a " gift " for playing. Hats off to you guys and girls. Those games, compared to what I have now is amazing. I am pushing 52 yrs old, so I have had a good look at the beginning of this gaming world. I really love the " this is what we have been racing towards " commercial. it the best commercial I have ever seen. This is the best racing game I have ever played, I never dreamed I would have my own kick ass simulator racing game of this quality in my living room. Sometimes its easy to take things for granted, for one, I am very thankful to be living in a time in history that I am able to even do this. I live better than the king of England did only a couple hundred years ago.
I had not played a video game in 20 years, after I retired last year I got an x box and forza 5, now 6 and I am loving it.
Glad to see someone else enjoys the game as much as me
I too love to commercial it reminded of a few child good games I’d played and had forgot about gaming has come a long way from when I was kid (26yo )
So I’m glad someone has this view too
We used to have The Golden Dome.
A dark, loud, sticky, smelly place your dad would drop you off while he would go see an R rated flick or get drinks.
Dudes would never get off of the racing games, because you sat down in the actual video cockpit, at that time, for a kid, it was awesome.
But the racing games were very hard for arcade games, you needed crazy reaction timing, and they rarely gave you enough time to play before time ran out (with the exception of maybe Out Run)… and before you knew it, you would be out of quarters waiting out front for pops to hurry back.
Good times.
thats what they made pinball for. 5 or 6 free games and sell them for a dollar to buy more tokens. and the trick to racing games was to go as slow as you could and still win against the rubber band ai in ivan ironman stewart, you could play for well over half an hour on a quarter. track and feild was another game what was easy to learn the tricks of and win. asteroids you could play forever. pac man once you learned the patterns you could play forever. get a top ten score so you could initial the machine and kids would give you two tokens to let them put in their initials. if kids got caught betting they would get kicked out, but there were plenty of ways to get quarters without betting. i probably bought a house at the arcade 25 cents at a time.
lol awesome. Some of the games I hated were the ones we alreaday had on Atari or NES, so you had the ‘cool’ kids come to the Arcade and slay them with their console tricks and experience.
Ha! I literally learned how to drive a clutch on Race Drivin at an arcade. My first car I bought was standard and I’d bought it without parental permission or knowledge so I had to get creative.
Your only 52 and retired and can spend all your time playing Forza Motorsport? I hate you.
Nice post accuforcewheel1, and agree.
I bought an Xbox 360, just to play FM4 and a Xbox One, just to play FM5
The entire FM series is simply the best games I have ever played.
Thanks for sharing!
Phuu, good to know i’m not th only one … 
just for me it was Forza 3 at the beginning. And i enjoy the games !! Cant wait to play the old ones in Xbox 360 compatibility mode on the One
Nope you are definitely not the only one. I saw an in line review of FM4, and they were talking about the free American Muscle Pack, and had a picture of a 1970 Plum Crazy Coronet Super Bee racing and I was hooked. I never had much luck with racing games before, thought they were too ‘arcadeish’ to really take seriously, so I sort of stopped looking around, and had not even heard of FM1-FM3 at that point. Needless to say, my eyes were opened. And I did it in reverse, after I logged a lot of miles on FM4, went back and played FM3 and finished that 99.9%, and I am dabbling in FM2, but honestly been having way too much fun in FH2 and FM6, but I will finish up FM2 at some point.
I agree with you on the Back Compatibility, I am looking forward to having all the FM titles on Xbone! Hoping we get all the titles!
I grew up with games. I’m a mid 70s kid and when I was around 6 or 7 my mother, who was a programmer, bought the first personal computer she could afford (C64) brought it home and left the unopened box with me to figure out. I’ve been gaming ever since.
I didn’t get into driving games however, until I got my first performance car, an R33 Skyline GTS25t, in 1999. It was more than I could handle, so I started taking it to the track where my driving instructor recommended I try out Gran Turismo. I did not have a PlayStation but ran it on my PC with an emulator called Bleem. I played it on a keyboard!
GT2 caused me to buy a PlayStation. Then GT3 a PlayStation 2 (waited for a bundle). I was oblivious of Forza until the 360 launched, so I waited for Forza 2, which I played for a year on my mate’s 360, before buying my own. I bought the XB1 for Forza, Horizon 2 and 6 (I waited for FH2 before getting into 5, I anticipated it would be similar to what happened with GT3).
I only buy a console for these games. Sure I will buy other types of games once I have the console, but these games sell consoles to me. I love that I can pick a car from the huge roster and drive it the way I want to. I love that Forza gives a lot of freedom to play with the cars too and instantly. IRL doing these things would be expensive and time consuming.
I have my issues with FM6 but I still put in enough time to make my gf get very annoyed with me and it’s hard to pull myself away from it every night 
Well said, Mr. Accuforce, sir.
I’m 34, and, like you, have witnessed the evolution of the Racing Video game firsthand.
I started with Pole Position, by Atari- the very same ancient PC game that’s being toasted to in the commercial you mentioned.
Then there were the myriad arcade-racers in the SNES years- I still credit F-Zero for teaching me the concept of a “racing line”. “The Need for Speed”, the first game of that series, was (unbeknownst to many gamers today) actually a serious attempt at a driving sim for everyone, one of the first by a AAA game developer (the arcadeyness, unfortunately, started with NFS2, and continues to the present day). I played the HELL out of that thing: I literally broke my PC racing wheel in half (from overuse, not gamer-rage), and developed a love for driving sims.
In 1997 I played “Gran Turismo”. This made me go get a part-time job so I could afford a PSX and said game. I loved the GT games. Then, in 2006 history repeated itself. This time, the game was FM2, the console an Xbox 360 (though I already had a job this time). I’ve been a Forza man ever since, getting FM3, FM4, FH1, the XB1 console, FM5, FH2, and FM6 all on their respective release dates.
I sometimes cringe when I read some of the “complaints” about FM6 that pop up on the forums, written largely (I assume) by “millennials”: these kids have NO idea how good they have it, how far these games have really come in 30 years. Just imagine going to the late 80’s and showing the guys who made Pole Position a game like FM6 or GTA5. They’d think you were a God.
I know what you mean. I think my first racing game was 3D Grand Prix on Amstrad. Although I probably spent most of my childchood playing Lotus challenge games on Amiga. We used to play for days on end in split screen with my mate. Happy days. It’s also a reason I never play chase cam on Forza, it just reminds me too much of that game.
Other than that I’ve had pretty similar road: after whole host of games on Amiga and things like Test Drive, and immortal Grand Prix series I played a bit of NFS (2 think), then GT5 and then FM3, FM4 and now FM6 (I do tend to get long breaks).
The first Test Drive was awesome. You mean the one with the Porshe and the Ferrari? IIRC that game had damage simulation as well. Wait. Didn’t it have rain and wipers? That was what I would consider my first open world sim racer. I was also a big TDU fan, just aimless cruising on a beautiful island.
So how far have games come in the last 5 years? Or have they gone backwards?
Or have they become games for the masses that no longer cater for the hardcore?
In some aspects you are right. But the games did not develop backards, they develop back to a mor normal and broader audience. I remember times when game developers much too much focused on the hard core games at very high skill Levels (at “Elite” level, the customer base is very thin). For normal, average, causual gamers some tiltes became unatractive. And games are entertainment for very different types of audience.
In general, over the last years, the balance of games for different gamer types is much better.
And Forza, off course, if a game that’s developed for everyone, each special interest group claims “i’m underrepresented, there is not enougth content for my interest” … and yes, i would wish for sim racers, a couple of more options would be there. And i have wishes fo improvement. But look with open eyes on the game.
- It looks awesome
- tons of cars for each type of car fan
- at all good car simulation
- tons of car customizing features
- single player, granular adjustable to your indevisual skill level
multiplayer - that’s the biggest challenge for game developers. multiplayer experience is not ruined by game mechanics, it is ruined by some games. And implementing game mechanics to punishing unwanted gamer behavior is anything else than easy. And whatever the developers will do, someone will complain!
There is a lot of content for everyone. FM is some of the games you can have real long term fun. It is great racing. You can develop your skill over time, it will stay challenging.
And about complaints making me giggle "Why T10 made all this useless and distracting things in the game like airplanes, helicopters etc … " … take a view some 20 years back … Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge maybe this has some less distracting graphical things and you can focus better on driving.
And some missing features … especialy community features like marketplace for cars, paints, setups etc, option to gift in game items to other gamers - That’s mostly gone based on one fact. This features were abused by some gamers, and this includes the selling of in game items for real world money.
Stop ranting - if you don’t like the game - there are alternatives. For me FM6 is a great game!
I understand, but I wasn’t “cringing” at folks complaining about the missing features, some of which I’d like back myself.
I’m not going to call anyone out, but there have been some truly banal complaints on here (not this thread specifically, the forums in general). I was talking about THEM. The content is a touch weak (still better than FM5), but the meat-and-potatoes is this: for a simcade-casual console game which cost between $60 and $100 (depending: bell/whistle), and runs on $500 hardware, it delivers a shockingly realistic driving experience. It’s a shame more folks don’t realize that. P.Cars is good, Asetto is good. I think FM6 is better, if only in this regard. I play these games (and always have) for just that: the behind-the-wheel experience.
It’d be really nice if we had FM4’s MP options. It’d be great if we could customize free play all the way down to each drivatar’s car, build and tune. But, I don’t really need any of it. Please don’t mistake my tone for being militant or hardheaded: I’m not saying anyone’s wrong for wanting stuff. I realize that this is just me.
I just wanna drive really god damn fast: FM6 delivers that the most accurately, and with the greatest variety of vehicles, of any console game currently on the market. Physics wise I do think it’s the best so far in the franchise, and like I said, that’s one of the biggest factors to me.
If we’re to judge certain games in particular which I guess you’re getting at here then games have gotten prettier in the last five years and that’s about it. Even the stuff that makes the game look pretty isn’t progressing as well as it could but perhaps that “is limited due to the console’s hardware capacity”?
Sure. But I could not care less about the graphics.
Can the console only handle dumbed down physics? Does it need stupid puddles that would cause a real life race to be called off? Does it prevent sensible decisions that give the users options?
As it is it is pretty clear that they are trying to cater for the biggest crowd as are all developers these days. But why not provide options so an even wider range of people can enjoy the game?
The race WAS called off. Then a bunch of madmen and crazy women showed up, who were willing to race in these conditions: us.
The puddles COULD be more dynamic, and the effects COULD be better, but let’s reduce it to meat-and-potatoes again. That is VERY MUCH what it feels like to hit a puddle at high speed, exactly the sort of thing I play driving games for.
Besides, illogical logistics didn’t prevent you from enjoying Horizon