![]() I started learning more about real racing and the physics of racecars, and I was hooked. How could Pole Position at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway be any fun? And with my interest in Flight Simulator, I thought it would be neat to make a flight simulator on a race track, with a 3D out-of-the-cockpit view and real physics. "It seemed to me at the time that the fan base for an arcade oval track game would be just about zero. Yet there was little doubt in Kaemmer's mind where this whole thing was heading. As Kaemmer now firmly maintains, only half-jokingly, "My partner Omar humored me by letting me write racing sims." Candidly, however, Kaemmer wasn't shy about his idealistic goal: to build the first truly authentic PC racing simulation. On a conservative, realistic level, Papyrus operated primarily as a contract programming services company. I always wanted to figure out how to make a program that could draw a 3D image like that." When Kaemmer left McGraw-Hill in his early twenties, his two passions had already begun to overlap and integrate.īy 1987, with the McGraw-Hill game already behind them and firmly convinced the rudimentary action-oriented auto racing gaming scene of the time could use a heavy dose of authenticity, Kaemmer and Khudari formed Papyrus Design Group. My favorite program for the TRS-80 was 'Flight Simulator' from subLogic. "I was probably one of the first people in west central Indiana to buy a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computer. It was only natural then that as home computers began to filter into mainstream America, Kaemmer was an early convert. Suffice it to say, Kaemmer lost more than his fair share of cash into one of the most notorious quarter-gobblers of the day, Atari's Pole Position. His love of fast cars was almost obsessive, equaled in his teens only by an infatuation for the binary world of early arcade video games. But recently, Kaemmer and Khudari found themselves deeply involved in something infinitely more interesting-something that held their mutual attention far more than a mere mathematics edutainment title.īorn and raised in Indiana, just an hour's drive from the storied Indianapolis racetrack, Kaemmer was drawn to the sport of auto racing at a very young age. Twenty-four-year-old David Kaemmer and his business partner Omar Khudari were fresh from a stint at an educational software company where together they wrote an instructional graphic adventure game for the Apple II system entitled "The McGraw-Hill Mathematics Solving Courseware," a product Kaemmer maintains was considerably livelier than its rather dry name might indicate. Hard drives had recently arrived on the scene, text-based adventures were commonplace, and PCs had only begun to hit the mainstream. It was the mid-1980s and the home-based computer game business was still very much in its infancy. In the interim, let's explore just what it was about this Massachusetts studio that propelled it from its relatively humble beginnings into arguably the most respected computer racing game designer in the world. This is great news for fans of the ultra-authentic Papyrus style, and certainly worthy of the closer examination that we'll give it later in the article. If all goes as it should, that technology will resurface in the not- so-distant future within a different framework and under a different name. In fact, as of this writing, founder and driving force David Kaemmer had just emerged from discussions with VU wherein he successfully recovered the rights to Papyrus' venerated racing simulation technology. ![]() Papyrus founder David Kaemmer on the left.įortunately, the standard-setting Papyrus racing concept is not as dead as some might think. Indeed, to say that the last decade and a half of computer driving would have suffered had Papyrus not been at the wheel is a serious understatement. Changing the face of PC racing was its ongoing goal, and it was something the Boston-based company did very well throughout its entire run. But mere survival wasn't the only plan in the Papyrus books. That Papyrus managed to survive for 17 years-an incredible stretch for a comparatively small design studio in a business increasingly dominated by heavily staffed juggernauts-was an amazing feat in itself. Rarely in this flighty, roller coaster industry has a single developer so mightily impacted its chosen genre. When Papyrus Racing Games released its final installment in the storied NASCAR Racing series in February of 2003 and was then officially shut down by publisher Vivendi Universal in May of this year, one of the most remarkable tales in all of computer gaming was seemingly brought to a disappointing and premature standstill. Papyrus' Grand Prix Legends is still considered to be one of the finest racing games of all time.
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