In memoriam
As you’re all well aware, Colin McRae, along with is son, a school friend and his son, was killed in a tragic helicopter accident. This review of Colin McRae DiRT was being written at the time of the accident. We believe that to have published the review so soon after Colin’s death would have been insensitive and so have held it back until now.The Codemasters issued a statement about the crash and have a message board up at www.codemasters.co.uk/colinmcrae for you to leave messages on. I always respected Colin as a rally driver and am of the firm belief that his all-or-nothing driving style brought many new supporters to rally driving and he really was an excellent ambassador for the sport.
Here is the Codemasters’ statement in full:
As followers of racing games, and followers of Codemasters, I’m sure you have by now heard the very sad news of the death of Colin McRae, his son and two family friends.
For us all here at Codemasters, it was a privilege to be associated with a man recognised as a true great. He always took a keen interest in the game experience, wanting to make sure it was without equal in its portrayal of the sport. He was not prepared to compromise and was as passionate as us in making the Colin McRae games the best they could be.
For those of us who worked closely with Colin and got to know and admire him, we take great heart from this and recall great memories of his time in the dev studio. I’m sure that many of you out there reading this will also have wonderful memories of a first-class sportsman, whether from WRC coverage, or if you were lucky enough to meet him.
Many of you have already posted messages of condolence on the Codemasters forum, and we would like you to know that we’ve set up a dedicated page for this purpose on the Codemasters website here: www.codemasters.co.uk/colinmcrae
Personally, I’ll count the interview I did with him in 2004 as a memory I’ll forever cherish, and I thought I’d just pull a short quote from it to end this tribute to a friend of Codemasters, and an all-around "car guy"
RFT:"OK. What is it about you as a rally driver that makes you better than the next guy?"
CM:"For any successful driver, it’s confidence. Self-belief. But that’s in anything in life. If you’re confident in what you’re doing and you really believe in yourself that you can pull it off, then generally you will."
Rich "RFT" Tysoe
Codemasters
With the greatest respect to Colin and his family, we publish our PS3 review of Colin McRae on the following pages.