Jarrett & Labonte Stock Car Racing

Jarrett & Labonte Stock Car Racing
Also known as: TOCA World Touring Cars (EU), WTC: World Touring Championship (JP) Developer: Codemasters Publishers: Codemasters (EU/US), Spike (JP) Platform: PlayStation Released in JP: November 9, 2000 Released in US: October 3, 2000 Released in EU: August 25, 2000 This game has unused text. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article

The American release is particularly infamous for being named after (and featuring) a pair of NASCAR busts, despite the actual game having zero NASCAR content.

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Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Unused Text

Despite the European versions lacking in-race music, text mentioning the feature can be found in localization files. The file WTC/FE/LANGUAGE/FE_E.LTS contains the strings:

RACE MUSIC OFF
RACE MUSIC ON

Additionally, the WTC_MUS.XA music file is present in that (and the Japanese) version, and contains only menu music.

Regional Differences

The US version includes several music tracks, which can be played in race, as well as commentary from Ned Jarrett. In the start of career mode, Jason Jarrett or Justin Labonte can be chosen, although you still can write any driver name. All instances of the term "touring car" were replaced with "stock car" to match the changed title.

The Japanese version (known as WTC: World Touring Cars in-game) is overall closer to the European release, although the music files are different. The game also contains a partial Japanese localization, with most of the in-game text being in English.

Branding

To reflect each region's title, the logo at the end of the intro movie (INTRO.STR) is different, though the movie itself is otherwise the same.

Europe	US	Japan

The branding changes also extend to the copyright notices and title screen:

Europe	US	Japan

Menus

• When starting a new championship, in the European and Japanese versions you choose territory to start; in the US version you choose one of the titular NASCAR drivers instead (an additional View Biography option is also added to accompany this change).

Europe	US	Japan

• When inputting the player name after that, the Japanese version uses arrow icon here, instead of a driver silhouette.
• The ability to toggle race music on and off is added in the US version. Additionally, pit crew speech is disabled by default.
• WTC Records named in US version as WSCR Records, since all "touring car" mentions were changed to "stock car" in that version. This change also applies to the final championship.

Europe	US	Japan

Revisional Differences

There are two European releases: SLES-02572 which contains English, German, and French languages, and SLES-02573 which has only Italian and Spanish.

SLES-02572	SLES-02573

Anti-Piracy

Some PlayStation games released after 1998 (especially in PAL regions, like Europe, Oceania and South Africa) contain the LibCrypt protection system developed by Sony, in order to curb modchips and illegal copies on the system.

The LibCrypt functions on the software level in two ways: by detecting a modchip upon bootup of the game and by detecting an illegal copy through a 16-bit key located in the subchannel data of the disc. The first check is to see whether or not a modchip is installed on the system. As earlier modchips are active by default, all that is necessary to detect one is for the program to return data from a modchip. If it detects it, the game crashes immediately. This was mitigated by pirates with so-called "stealth" modchips, which turn off immediately when loading disc region data during boot-up. However, the second check now comes into play. The second part functions as a part of the game. It decrypts the 16-bit LibCrypt data key stored in the subchannel of the disc and stores it in the coprocessor of the system. If the data is incorrect, the game implements its anti-piracy measures. As most CD burners cannot properly replicate subchannel data on the disc, a pirated copy, whether burned directly to another disc or as a disc image, trips the anti-piracy measure by default.

A modded system allows for a backup, a pirated copy, or a legitimate copy of the game from a region different than the console, to start normally. However, with LibCrypt, the game can crash, freeze or perform tricks to prevent pirates, depending on the title.

In this case, the game starts out fine, until the player choose any race to play. It always freezes when loading stage is almost finished, making race not available.

This unfortunately prevents the European version from being played on a PlayStation 3 due to the software emulation setting off this measure.

(Source: Copy Protected PlayStation games list, MVG's video about copy protection schemes on PS, Original TCRF Research)