Nitto 1320 Legends

Nitto 1320 Legends is the third and final game in the Nitto drag racing simulation series for PC. This game was the successor to the game, Nitto 1320 Challenge. Developed and published by CIE Games, this was the final game released for Microsoft Windows from CIE Studios.

Nitto 555R Challenge (V0)
Not much is known about Nitto 555R Challenge except from the memories of the players or those who have archived the files for the game. Currently, it is possible to still download 2 versions of this game, 1.7 and 2.0. Released to the public in 1997, this was the first game from CIE Games, but under the name Choice Enterprises. Created in Adobe Flash, the game was ultimately exploitable by hackers and cheaters, leading to the release of Nitto 1320 Challenge soon after the 2.0 update to Nitto 555R Challenge.

Nitto 1320 Challenge (V1)
The original private beta release for Nitto 1320 Challenge was late 2001, with a full release made to the public early 2002. Nitto 1320 Challenge was dubbed "v1" by the community, introducing Team Racing, an entire new user interface, new cars and more. It also had online play, more tuning options, and was playable up until July 2007, although for a short time, was available to play as a Facebook game in the early 2010s. Created with Adobe Flash, this made it a target for hackers and cheaters, eventually resulting in modified clients being released with access to features not normally possible to players, such as moderator sanctions, and racing exploits.

Nitto 1320 Legends (V2)
In January 2007, a private beta rolled out, version 0.4.0, of a heavily updated game called Nitto 1320 Legends, the sequel to Nitto 1320 Challenge. Mainly coded by one person during the private betas, this game brought a wealth of new features over the previous series entry, including the ability to compete against your friends via a public or private chat room live racing and watch others run their races as a spectator. There were two main race types; Head-to-Head or Bracket; Head-to-Head was a straight-up race between two drivers to see who could get the fastest Reaction Time (RT) and Estimated Time (ET), while Bracket allowed the player to guess their Estimated Time before they began racing, with the objective to get as close as possible to your guessed Estimated Time without exceeding it. There was also an extensive engine-building feature. An in-game Used Car Lot was also added for players to buy and sell cars with their unique part setups and tunes on them. The game eventually, in an update, introduced the ability to perform custom paint jobs and wraps; this made cars even more valuable to some as you could make it look exactly how you wanted it to. Team Racing made a return from Nitto 1320 Challenge after an update and nearly 200 cars were introduced into the game.

Gameplay
The aim of the game is to be the best drag racer online by building up your Street Cred (SC), car collection and in-game money. There were no achievements, unlike many of today's games. You start with a basic stock car, either the Scion tC, Nissan Sentra SE-R, Mustang GT or Acura Integra GSR; game players can win money via tournaments held around the clock, racing against computer opponents of varying difficulty. With the money won, players can choose to invest in new performance parts to make their car faster or more consistent, move up the property ladder to release new content to buy or put money towards more cars for their garage. The cars in the game represent those commonly found at a street meet drag race or other racing discipline. Many Japanese, European and American manufacturers are represented.

Online Tournaments
There were many online tournaments in the game as well. Some were just the planned ahead basic tournaments of Naturally Aspirated only, Turbocharged only, Supercharged only, Head-to-Head, Bracket or tournaments where only specific cars could race. After a while, massive online tournaments would be held once a year, with sponsors from companies like NOS (the NOS Powershot Tournament), Royal Purple (the Royal Purple Rumble), two WD40 (the WD40 Tournaments), one Halloween Tournament, Vs The World, and Import vs Domestic Face-Off. The large tournaments came with special prizes for the winner, and the top 10 players would get a set of special rims for whichever car they chose.

Administrators
The Admins were comprised of the developers and employees of CIE Games/CIE Studios. Some would mainly watch the web forum, others would work on updates for the game and some would just help out as customer service.

Senior Moderators
Senior moderators not only keep order within the game and forum, but are also a superior rank to voted-in moderators and are responsible for their training.

Moderators
Moderators are responsible for keeping forum and game chat windows in order and can also ban or mute people who disobey rules within the game. Moderators are voted in every 3 months with a Top 10 position.

Guides
Guides are present in the game to help out new users to the many features of the game. They can mute for rule breaking within the game, but cannot ban like moderators can.

Journalists
Journalist tasks include writing about the game and new features for the site and forum. They also do the occasional interview of racers (i.e. tournament winners).

End of Life
While the security on Nitto 1320 Legends was better than any of the games before it, the game's front end was created in Adobe Flash, just like the previous games. While bots like Acez Edge, Nitto Assist, Nitto Legends Control Center and others reigned supreme in the early years of the game, summer of 2012 one player made it public knowledge that the security had been bypassed and source code was accessible. As the game's client was responsible for authenticating changes, many initial cheats began with the simple task of disconnecting and reconnecting their internet connection before and after their modifications were completed; this started with cosmetic tweaks, but later progressed to people being able to add and remove certain parts that should not be added or removed, causing unfair advantages during a race. This eventually reached a crescendo, and the game was taken offline soon after, with the developers choosing to concentrate their efforts into a new mobile racing game, Racing Rivals, which began development as early as January 2012.

Current Status
While there have been community efforts to create new servers for these games, these efforts has met with varying success. A project with the Nitto 1320 Challenge archived files was started as early as Summer 2016, but is not yet in a 100% completed state. With very few members from the old communities possessing the programming knowledge needed to recreate these servers, progress has effectively stalled. In 2017, CIE Games was bought by Glu Mobile, including all assets. Glu Mobile has thus far has shown no interest in reviving this IP.