Kisah tentang bagaimana Geleos menguasai Rusia. Sejarah Lada Racing Club
1 November revived the blog about Lada Racing Club on our portal. MrPatogen posted some screenshots from this horror, the last of which became a symbol of the game. And I became curious – do modern gamers remember how Geleos took advantage of the Russian people and left them without support? It turned out that many haven’t even heard of such a game, although only three and a half years have passed. Perhaps it’s better not to know about such projects, but the case of LRC was unique – the game was extensively promoted, sold in record numbers (300,000 copies in a year), and caused several unique scandals that had never been seen in the industry and probably never will be. Moreover, a second part is in development, and I feel it is my duty to prepare gamers for the second coming. Unfortunately, the official game site and most fan sites have been dead for a long time, so it’s important to talk about this before LRC is completely forgotten!
Introducing – a retrospective review specially for GAMER.ru!
The project was announced in 2004 in May. The studio Geleos Media, known for the excellent racing arcade “Ostrich Racing”, together with ArtyShock Company, promised us almost a dream game – racing in a fully recreated three-dimensional Moscow, the entire model range of Lada, and a modern graphics engine! Here’s the game trailer released in early 2005:
An impressive picture for its time. The water looked like in Half-Life 2, reflections on the cars were many times better than in NFS Underground 2, and all this in a Russian game! It just lacked some post-effects, but the picture was juicy and beautiful even without them. The developers were eager to engage with the press and players, often appearing on the official forum and answering questions. In addition to the license from “AvtoVAZ” for the entire model range of Lada, Geleos also used tuning parts from companies like Rider, Pro-Sport, ATT, SVR, Promo, Lit Company, Clutchnet, and some others. Multiplayer, races with and as the police, changes in times of day, and two game modes – simulator and arcade – were also promised. For the game's promotion, Miss Moscow Alena Kiryachok was invited:
An unprecedented promotion was also announced – every buyer of the licensed version automatically became a participant in a contest, the grand prize of which was a brand-new “Lada”, fully tuned. Huge money was allocated for promotion,
The game was promised to be released in December 2005, with the exact date even stated on the Novy Disk website – December 14. This date remained there on December 13, and people genuinely believed that the game would come out and make for a great New Year’s gift. But on December 14, the following news appeared on the official site:
*The release of the game is delayed for some (short) time due to objective reasons. However, you can already pre-order it in the online store