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Despite the myriad wear and tear that many real-world licensed vehicles undergo throughout Driver: San Francisco, every car that explodes over the course of the game is an ASYM Desanne, a fictional prop vehicle not available for the player’s use without modding.

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Mildly distracting product placement, Mad Max (2015)

(These were originally available as part of a promotion on specially-marked cans, but are optional free content for the Steam version that can be disabled.)

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The ‘98 Indy 500 Pace Car (a pack-in bonus in US Walmart copies) compared to its stock counterpart (available in all versions of the game), Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (1998, PC)

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Today in wonderful attention to detail: hitting the signs at the finish line in DiRT Rally means starting the next stage with your windshield cracked from the impact.

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A fond farewell to DiRT 3 from Steam; after over a year spent converting it from Games For Windows Live and mass upgrades to the Complete Edition to compensate for it, it now joins its prequel DiRT 2 in outright removal from the service. It still remains available on discs for consoles, and one of the best off-road racing games out there.

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GRID has now been removed from Good Old Games and Steam, due to licensing agreements expiring. Here’s hoping it continues to be loved and enjoyed as intended; it holds up wonderfully even today.

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I'm not keen on the objectification of women. I despise it greatly. The era of the midriff and pop music that, God bless it, insists on incorporating lewd and demeaning sexual references in every single song and television show, is contaminating our youth (me), making them believe that a tight tummy and kept pubic line are of greater importance than personal well being, dignity, intelligence, strength, compassion...virtue. I see this, and like any 'good' person, refrain from partaking in its many sinful delights as best I can. But I'm no idiot and I'm no hypocrite. I'm a male who, like every other with an eye for attractive girls, will consistently cave into the all powerful demands of genetics, wants, desires, and needs inherent with the race of man. Will is fleeting when perfume is strong.

Ivan Sulic, the IGN review of Hooters Road Trip (2002)

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Brad Keselowski before and after age verification, NASCAR Heat Evolution (2016)

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The subtitles guy on Need for Speed: The Run has never heard of punctuation apparently.

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Giving Daytona’s other big event some love, NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup (2004)

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Now, this is your name with the list of champions, Daytona USA (1993)

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The road to Daytona, The Crew (2014)

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Santa Monica shows a fine choice of font, The Crew (2014)

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The singular, sole challenge included in the base game, NASCAR Heat Evolution (2016)

(Correction: more can be unlocked without purchasing DLC. This is just the surprisingly stark screen you’re greeted with at first.)

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Track Tours - Daytona Beach

Known as: The Birthplace of Speed Game debut: Kyle Petty’s No Fear Racing

Before the speedway, there was the beach. Stock car racing was around the USA for years, just about as long as there were cars and roads to drive them on. The Midwest had success with racetracks such as Indianapolis, but the South had far less in the way of organized racing options. In 1947, a racing promoter from the south, William H.G. France, aimed to change that, and in 1948, the first race of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing was held on a makeshift road course across a strip of the A1A highway and the shore at Daytona Beach. This, it can be said, is where it all began for NASCAR.

Notable appearances:

Daytona Beach 500, NASCAR Thunder 2002/2003/2004

Not only did the Thunder series herald the addition of Daytona International Speedway to the EA Sports NASCAR games, but if you flipped through the alternate events for Daytona, the Daytona Beach 500 was among them, and completely replaces the speedway with the original beach course, lovingly preserved from the 40′s.

However, it’s scaled down significantly; it’s about half the size of the real deal but still copies the general layout. This way, it matches the scale of the rest of the game’s courses pretty well. It’s still a magnificent bit of virtual tourism for long-time fans to check out.

Daytona, The Crew

The Speedway may be absent in what’s otherwise a modern-day setting, but a condensed version of the town itself, and the strip of the A1A highway going through it used in the classic beach course, is present on the map.

The beach is compressed, too, meaning you can’t exactly replicate the original road course, but still, if you’re on a racing roadtrip across the USA, it’s a pretty important landmark to have present.

Notably Inspired:

Beach Blast, NASCAR Rumble

Yet another NASCAR game that couldn’t legally include Daytona International Speedway... but as Rumble includes absolutely no existing speedways, it only stands to reason that classic beach racing had to be included somewhere. And where better to do that with NASCAR drivers than on the iconic shores of Daytona Beach in some unnamed beach town definitely not especially similar to a real-world location?

Daytona: Beach Run, NASCAR Unleashed

NASCAR Unleashed’s courses are, for the most part, set at exaggerations of real-life speedways where a new race route ends up taking a detour off the course. In the case of Daytona International Speedway, the two routes are Oval Track, which is basically the real speedway, and Beach Run.

Beach Run sees you taking a right out of the speedway into the streets of Daytona Beach, going through the main strip of town before driving down some heavily, heavily banked beach. Driving on sand was difficult enough with the classic stock cars of yesteryear, but modern stock cars definitely do not handle well on it; expect to go flying off the jump and slamming into the boardwalk a good few times.

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The local POLICE PRECINCT, Driver: San Francisco (2011)

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A gift from a neighbor that works in an auto shop where this was languishing in a back room unused. Hell of a flashback; I had a replica of this firesuit for a Halloween costume as a kid and drove as Burton in the games all the time.