Project Gotham Racing 2

With the title, you are probably wondering, "Has Dave lost his mind?" or perhaps, "Is this still a travel blog?"  Rest assured, folks, because (1) we are not changing blog formats and (2) this definitely ties into travel.


One day at work, during the Summer of 2005, I finally broke down and bought an original X-box gaming console.  My previous gaming system was an 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System that I received on Christmas Day 1988, which still works to this day.


Okay, enough on that and onto my motivation for buying an X-box.  After getting pummeled at Halo by my younger cousin, Jonathan, I needed to step up my game so I could give him a good "beat down" as brothers or male cousins would.  One weekend, I decided to stop at the nearby Hollywood Video and chose to rent a couple of games.


The first one was a 007 action game that was very difficult to play.  After about 15 minutes of frustration, I ejected the thing and put it back in its case, never to grace the innards of my X-box ever again...


Next up?  Project Gotham Racing 2, a street racing game with real cars that takes place in the following places:  Chicago, Washington DC, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Florence, Nurburgring (the longest and fastest track, located in Germany), Moscow, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Yokohama!  Now, this was months before I met Heather, so (1) I wasn't exactly inspired to go anywhere internationally and (2) I wasn't sure if the city scenes were realistic or just a bunch of fluff.  Regardless, it was a very fun game.


Later that year, I was playing it while waiting for Heather to arrive.  The doorbell rang, I paused the game, and let her in.  I was about to turn off the console when she expressed an interest.  So, I mentioned that Hong Kong was in the game.  Then, she wanted to see it.


We got the "Welcome to Hong Kong" skyline roll and she was identifying all the major landmarks.  In other words, everything in the game appears to be real!


Roughly four years later in 2009, we arrived in Sydney.  I started walking by places I had seen before in the game, which was awesome, because those places I were blazing by at 230 MPH in a Ferrari F50?  They're real!

  

Fast forward to 2010, where we took a day trip to Florence on our last day in Italy...

Fast forward to 2011, where we stopped in Washington DC before leaving for Europe via Baltimore...

So, I have technically been to Chicago multiple times, but haven't been in the downtown area in roughly a decade.  Perhaps one day, we'll go back and get game shots from there...

So, for now...  Three sites down and seven to go!  The trickiest of them all should be Nurburgring, but perhaps I can knock all of these out when Lily's old enough...