Note that GP500 is an old game written for Windows95 and it won't play on many Win2000, XP or Vista machines despite there being hacked game files available which purport to run on newer systems. If you've got a laptop running XP it may well run GP500 with the XP hack, but most desktops with later graphics cards etc. will probably not be able to run the game.

GP500 - the best bike racing game around as far as we are concerned. It's been out for a while now but enjoying a whole new lease of life as we found out out to hack it and get ourselves into the racing!

The game depicts the 1998 World GP season complete with the correct bikes and tracks. But there are sites on the net where you can download all the latest teams plus World Superbikes and some roadbikes.

Good fun to play, but until you've got some practice in, speeds into corners are hard to judge - you keep on ploughing into the gravel traps on every bend! Once you've learnt the track and mastered the bike handling the races are great fun.

You can reduce your opponents' skill level to help you in the early races, and braking is helped by a little red symbol at the top of the screen which fades as you approach the correct corner entry speed - for a quick lap you need to be driving through the bend with the marker just showing. If it disappears altogether you're too slow. It's replaced by a wheelspin indicator when you spin up the back tyre.

Replays are good with some excellent driver postures and weirdly lifelike waving to the crowd at the end of the race. Bike action is realistic (for a game!) and you can watch the front moving around as the back steps out or spins up, with clever suspension action. Unfortunately most of the races are as processional as in real life - shame they didn't do the 125s instead! Still, you don't notice this when you are racing your nuts off trying to win!

The sound is fine, if you like buzzy two-strokes screaming at max revs. If you don't, download nice grumbly V-twins or four stroke noises ... even make your own! Download a sound editor and bust the sound file (gp500g-22.slv). You'll see a bunch of wav files. 2.wav is increasing acceleration on track, 3.wav is increasing acceleration off track, 8.wav decreasing on track and 9.wav is decreasing off track. These are used on all the bikes except the Honda V2 and Yamaha bikes, which use 13, 14, 19 and 20.wav. So if you have a field of fours and V-twins, assign the V2/Yam sounds to the twins.

Oh, and if you fancy a laugh you can change all the adverts around the tracks to display pics and words of your choosing. You'll have to download PKzip to unzip the game's .dkz files as Winzip can't read them properly. The small DOS version works fine if you don't mind writing little batch files, otherwise go for the 5Mb Windows version from the PKzip site.

You don't need a massively quick PC, a PII 350 will work, but you do need a decent graphics card - 16 meg is a minimum but a G-Force 32 meg is preferable. You can play it on a decent portable if you turn the graphic options in the game down a bit.

Generally a good game if you like bike racing. Better graphics and much better skill balance than World Superbikes and with new teams available and the option to add your own, a long life is ensured ... until the decent weather returns and we all get out on real bikes, anyway!

How can I use the bikes (for example fireblade,suzuki,etc) while I am playing GP500 on my computer.Do I need only to download the kind of bike that I want from your site ?Will I have that bike in my GP500 bikes?Or is there any steps that I need to follow before I start playing game?
Dragan, Perth Australia

Hmm, this could get confusing. You need to pkunzip the .dkz files in your GP500 directory. You don't need to do the tracks but you will need gp-ui, gp-data and gp-bikes. Unzipping them will create a heap of files in your directory under a subdirectory "data". Unfortunately winzip won't work properly and you'll need to use pkunzip.

Go exploring and you will find under "textures" (ignore 8-bit textures) the graphics for the bikes and riders. Download some different graphics from www.gp500racing.com and the simplest way to start is to replace the graphics of the rider and bike with the new downloaded ones.

Problem is, when you run the game the names etc are still the same in the menu, and if you have used, say, a Ducati 916 skin you'll still have a 500 2-stroke design of bike. To get round this go to data\models\bikes, find the bike you've used for a new skin and replace the .dk4 files with ones from the 3D part of the gp500racing site.

If you want to create a full team of your own bikes you'll really need to get into changing the file gpparticipants.txt in the gp500/data directory, but this is a whole new can of worms and will deal a deal of trial and error before you master it. Check out the help documents on the gp500 racing site. Have a good read of these and everything will become clear .... or not.

Have fun!

The season started well, with a 1st row qualifier at Suzuka. I was aboard my 'Blade and feeling confident for a top 6 finish in the race. The bike seemed to be losing out coming out of the bends a bit, but I could outbrake even Barros, and he's supposedly the king of the late brakers, so things felt good.

Come the day of the race I had a sudden change of heart and went for a close ratio gearbox and a tad more compression on the rear. This set up had worked OK before, so today would be the acid test. After a good start and leading for two laps I slipped to fourth, but I pipped Checa at the chicane and then made myself as wide as possible. These tactics worked, a podium finish and 16 points in the bag, YEEHAA!!

The confidence I felt on the flight to Malaysia was one of pure delight. Johor held no secrets from me, I'd been there in pre-season testing and knew I could cream Doohan and co. For qualifying I chose a medium rear and a soft front. The close ratio box was made even closer ratio and so I set off on my qualifying laps. I kept coming back to the pits to bugger around and before I knew it I had 2 minutes of qualifying left and my bike was all over the place. I had to do a quick lap and avoid all the kitty litter just to get a decent start number. Oh my God, now the pressure was on. The gearing was all over the place, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, were far too close and I was just clicking into 6th with about 100 yards before the left hander after the long straight. The bike was crap, so was I. Anyway, a 4th row qualifier was all I could muster. I started the race only to end up crashing too much. I put this all down to feeling tired after a hard day in the orifice, so I shut it all down, ensuring I didn't save the game so I could improve the next time I was in Johor.

Last night I felt confident of a top 8 at Johor, considering the bike was so badly set up and race day was upon me. I could do a Rainey and ride round the problems, after all, this is the 2000 'Blade we're talking about here. I loaded the computer and found I had travelled all the way to Spain .... ? Where was my 3rd row qualifier at Johor?? I frantically clicked away and found that there was no record of this. I checked the standings and sure enough, I'd been classified a DNF and zilcho points. Oh shit, from 3rd to 10th in the championship standings in one foul swoop. It's a bitter pill to swallow I know, but I would endeavour to persevere and Jerez, like Johor, held no secrets. I had qualified on pole there before. After qualifying 3rd, groovy baby, the race started. The bike again was shite, but I could do 'em all on the brakes and just go up the inside and bump 'em out the way. I led the race for a couple of laps and then disaster struck. The following pack were right up my chocolate starfish, all of 'em!! Obviously I'd been holding 'em up. I panicked when I saw how close Abe was and promptly ran off the track, 1st to 15th on a matter of seconds!! OUTSPAN!! Right this is it, do or die stuff with a lap and half to go. I have never done a lap quicker at Jerez and was only two seconds outside the lap record - that's good for me, so stop laughing. But in the preceding half lap I did go wide again, so came 10th overall. Not good, and I stayed 10th in the overall standings.

Mugello next, bit of an unknown quantity. I'd only toyed with the track before, doing the high speed runs down the straight to see how fast I could go before braking and crashing in dramatic style. I think 183mph was the best I'd got, so I hadn't really tried too hard. I made sure that during qualifying the gearing was spaced nicely. Not too far and giving a 175ish top speed should do. Pole position was my reward - I was back with a vengeance! The race came and I was leading after the first few bends and really finding where I could go much quicker than the rest. But again, I panicked and overshot into the sand. 18th? What is going on? Rather than hit escape and restart the session, I persevered. 8th overall was all I could muster, but it'll do. I'm gonna do the championship again I decided, but I need to experience all tracks first.

OK, so after 3 races and a "not self imposed" DNF, I am lying a lowly 8th in the championship, on 28 points I believe.

Not bad for a novice, but the hard bit seems to be consistency and stringing more that two quick laps together.

I'll get there though.

Sometimes laters ....

Due to a lack of promised funds forthcoming from my Sponsor, I have had to cancel my first GP500 season. However, due to the undoubted skill that was noticed by HRC and rookie of the year title that I managed to obtain in my short time with the 'Blade, I have been snapped up by the Repsol Honda team as no.2 to Mick Doohan (uh?) ... Honda obviously reward loyalty!

The new season has started off well, with race wins at Suzuka, Mugello and Jerez. Poles too numerous to mention and a fastest lap of 1:24.006 at Paul Ricard has been established and now logged in the archives. I am currently lying level 1st in the table with "my mate" Mick as we enter the next round at Assen on 106 points.

Assen I am not looking forward to. I have never raced there and circuit knowledge certainly helps, as we all know. However, I will approach this race just the same as all the others - flat out from the word go and see where I crash first.

Assen? Difficult? Not half mate!! However, after a specially extended practise session, due only to the amount of crashes seen by all contenders in this session, I managed to get quite good at it, or so I thought. The very fast sweeping bends and flat out flat sections mean you really have to know where you're going or you get left behind very easily. As I was saying, I thought I was getting good ...

Qualifying a lowly 5th on the grid may not seem too good to the untrained race watcher, but believe me it was hard fought, so too was the race. I was leading by the half way stage of lap ONE, but to hold it there meant I had to be Mr. Smooth again. I had no one to follow so had to go quick where I knew I could go quick and err on the side of caution where needed. One part of the track I kept getting a fast right hand kink wrong and realised I had to back off very early and virtually coast round it, or that's how it seemed. During one of those not quiet coasting moments I ended up having to take to the grass, Max "Batty Boy" Biaggi, Doohan and Barros caught me up and passed with consummate ease. The best thing about being Tet is braking late, and Doohan found this out to his cost. Basically, he got in the way and the next time I passed the pits, the team informed me "Doohan has retired". Seeing as we were both on level points going into this round, I had to finish in the points. Barros and Biaggi were well up for the scrap and the lead was changing between the three of us several times on each lap. Lying in 2nd, coming into the right/left/right chicane before the start/finish straight, I got it a bit crossed up and hit the gravel, managed to keep her upright, but Barros was too quick for me on the exit and managed to get the power down a bit earlier, 3rd was my reward, but a harder race I'd not had all season. Next up Donington.

The Leicestershire countryside was green, pleasant and seemed very welcoming, the fact this was my home GP, filled me with a natural feeling of confidence. Even though I'd not practised at Donington at all during the closed season or even between races during this season. I felt had this feeling of confidence all the same purely because:
1/ I knew the layout from watching many races as a spectator.
2/ My time in the TOCA British Touring car series I took part in back in '98 which was mildly successful all the way up to the first corner of each race.

As there was no need for Friday practice here I went on the piss with my mechanics and left it all to do during qualifying on the Saturday. This is how I set the bike up…just change the gearing to a 16 F 40 R gear ratio, soft on the front, medium on the rear tyre set up and give it the berries on the first possible flying lap = POLE! Ha, another one. My arms are not long enough for the amount of Certina watches I now have to wear. Needless to say, the race was merely a formality and my win was not surprising. On the transporter to the Sachsenring later that week, I was feeling that I was in a rather healthy position being at the top of the table, but over-confidence can be a bugger.

I'd never ever, set eyes on the Sachsenring before, what did it hold? It held 2nd on the grid, that's what it held, but during the race, I'd chosen the wrong rear tyre and the left hand side was worn out in no time at all. With the bike running wide on all the lefts and the ensuing pack breathing down my neck I had to dig deep into my reserves of S.K.I.L.L. to keep her on the track. It wasn't easy, but I found that I could drop the pack a bit on right handers, once I got the power down and this seemed enough to keep them at bay, another win in the bag!! It's getting tough though.

I have a little time off now to recharge my batteries, with Brno the next circuit. I've not seen this one before either, but it shouldn't be a problem. I have a 26 point lead on Doohan with 4 rounds to go after this one, so I'm in a good position. Watch this space, the 500 title could be coming back to the UK. Maybe then I'll have to wear Brut 33 and shag loads of tarts, excellent, especially the latter!! I'll give the Brut to Keith.

Brno, you know, is a lovely track. However, it did require a bit of practise and then straight into the qualifying session. 4th was all I could muster, but again it was one of those tracks that had blindingly fast bits that if you got the line right, you dropped the pack fairly easily, but other parts that could be tricky. Boy did it take some doing to get a result here, but a result I had - another win in fact, oh yes, the title is mine all mine, but not until after another 5 rounds.

Imola next up. Oh God, this is like Assen, bloody fast, so good gear selection required. At Imola I struggled. Purely through lack of track knowledge and I just couldn't get the bike set up right. It kept running wide, I was trying different head angles, tyre choices, the lot and before I knew it I was running out of time and had to settle for a set up I was not entirely happy with. Doohan was his usual smug self and I could see him casting the odd glance toward my garage with that "I know the BEST bike settings for here Bruce" look in his eye. I really did feel like a fish out of water here, the pressure was immense and I could only qualify 7th on a bike that was not set up to my liking.

Come race day I was feeling no better, but I had that sort of Whithamness about me, you know, bad qualifying and possibly a good race. The race started and at the first left/right chicane I was bumped onto the grass and into last place. Got to keep going, and I did. I soon picked off the V twin 500s and the Muz thing and was soon messing with the likes of Aoki on his Suzuki, As the race progressed, my lap times were coming down and the bike was handling like an absolute peach, I'd obviously got a set of Michelins from God and they were now gripping like buggery. I managed to climb all the way to 4th, but there was no way I was get any higher, If only the race had been a couple of laps longer? Still, I was ahead of Doohan and Co, so it was looking good with only a few rounds to go.

During the next week, I was attempting to introduce some new riders to the GP circuit, and some new leathers and lids too. This all seemed to be going swimmingly, but upon resuming my title challenge, the game crashed and I lost the FUCKING lot, no matter what I did, my season was over.

Anyone who has played GP500 and busted it to change teams and riders around will know how fickle this game is and you have to be spot on when updating it. Sorry this all ended as a bit of a non event, but I suggest you buy the game yourselves and give it a go, it's brilliant and as you can tell, you can get right into it too