CONCORD, N.C. — As part of bringing back the “Heat,” one driver from the Toyota camp will grace the cover of the next NASCAR game based on tomorrow’s race.
Dusenberry Martin Racing announced today that the highest finishing Toyota driver in tomorrow night’s Sprint All-Star Race will be featured on the cover of NASCAR Heat Evolution. They unveiled some mock covers with all four of the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers and Martin Truex Jr. of Furniture Row Racing. Carl Edwards was among one of the artist rendering covers.
“I’m sitting here thinking of how strange this is for all of these things to converge,” Edwards said of the possibility of gracing the cover of the game. “As a race car driver right now at this point in my life and my career I’m out here in the All-Star event racing for a million dollars that Sprint put up and all of the stuff that goes along with it but growing up my only opportunity to drive a stock car like the one I drive now in reality was through video games. So, I played a ton of video games and I really loved driving games so it’s almost surreal to have the opportunity in my real capacity as a race car driver now to be driving for the opportunity to be on the cover of a video game that if a couple things hadn’t worked out that would be the closest I’d ever got to NASCAR.
“So, it’s really neat, it’s an honor and I don’t think anyone has every partnered in the way Toyota has with a video game licensee and manufacturer the way they have. It’s just a cool opportunity and the game sounds really neat so I look forward to the opportunity to play it. It would be crazy to be on the cover. I hope I’m on it. It’s neat for you guys to have me be a part of this because truly I had so much fun growing up, and I still do, with the video game stuff. It’s such a neat way for the fans to experience our sport. We have a very rare sport or opportunity that’s rare in the sport because the drivers, the participants, all we do is we push the throttle pedals and we turn the steering wheel and people through video game technology experience that as close as any fans can experience any sport because of the simulation properties that you guys are so good at. It’s cool, it’s fun.”
DM Racing will release the first official NASCAR game for the “next generation” of gaming console (XBOX 1 and Playstation 4) with NASCAR Heat Evolution on September 13, 2016. Being developed by Monster Games, who also made NASCAR Heat and NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona, it seeks to get back to the franchise’s roots with a thrilling racing experience for pros and rookies alike.
It features all 23 tracks on the Sprint Cup Series schedule with all 36 races as well. It also includes every driver in the Sprint Cup Series right now. It’s unknown if the game will contain any of the classic cheat codes like “shooting tires” and enlarge tires with miniature car bodies.
