Have you ever wondered what it felt like to be strapped into a 750 horsepower stock car, and drive down a straightaway at 200 miles per hour, only to whip around a corner and drive right back the other way. NASCAR Heat by Hasbro Interactive puts you into the driver's seat of a NASCAR Winston Cup stock car, and sends you out onto the track facing some of the best drivers in the sport. NASCAR Heat features 26 officially licensed NASCAR Winston Cup drivers, and 19 NASCAR Winston Cup tracks, including the world famous Daytona International Speedway.

NASCAR Heat is the first simulation in recent years to include Daytona International Speedway in its line-up of tracks. This is one of the most prestigious tracks in NASCAR, and hosts the Great American Race, the Daytona 500 each year. Fans of the sport have missed out on this track in all recent NASCAR Simulations, including NASCAR Racing 3 by Sierra and NASCAR 2000 by Electronic Arts. NASCAR Heat also includes such favourite tracks as the high speed Talladega Superspeedway, as well as the high-banked Bristol Motor Speedway. However, NASCAR Heat is missing two tracks due to licensing restrictions, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Pocono Raceway. NASCAR Heat features some of the most realistic tracks ever produced in a NASCAR Simulation. The tracks were modelled exactly to the specifications of their real life counterparts, and even the smallest details have been included. The infields of the tracks have been detailed to the fullest, even to the extent of the race logos being printed in the infield grass. On tracks such as Daytona, you have the option of racing during the day in the Daytona 500, or under the lights at the Pepsi 400. Superb lighting effects make racing at night very realistic, and the paint schemes on the cars gloss under the lights.

NASCAR Heat features an all-new physics model, never seen before in a NASCAR Simulation. This is much improved over the physics in Sierra's NASCAR Racing 3 as the car tends to bounce around more during races, compared to the more still feeling you have when driving with NASCAR Racing 3's physics model . During crashes, the car can catch air if turned around at high speed, mainly at tracks like Talladega and Daytona. While driving through a corner at speed, floor the gas out of the turn and watch your rear tires spin as you sit backwards on the track. Touch the apron with your tires while driving though a corner, and the car will whip around so fast you will have no chance to realize what has occurred until you come to a rest on the track. To put it simply, this physics model is tough. Driving at superspeedways is not as easy as many may presume, as the cars like to bounce around on the rough surfaces. MGI has modeled the drafting and slingshot effects very well. Get out of the draft for a second, and you will lose a lot of time. If you draft behind an opponent for several laps and then dive low, you will "slingshot" ahead of the car in front of you , an incredibly realistic attribute of the game.

The computer-controlled opponents in NASCAR Heat are some of the best ever created. MGI was well known for its great AI (artificial intelligence) in its previous title "Viper Racing", and they have improved this in NASCAR Heat. Cars race you hard, and any chance they get to grab a position from you, they'll take. Get out of the draft at Talladega or Daytona, and the computer cars will swarm you, sending you to the end of the draft in a hurry . It is not uncommon to see the AI cars racing three wide at Talladega. There are , however, a few minor problems with the AI in NASCAR Heat. One of these is the lack of AI wrecks. During a real NASCAR race, there will usually be several incidents, but very rarely do the AI cars crash on their own in this game . You usually have to bump them rather hard to get them to crash, and when they finally do, they tend to drive away rather quickly. Another small problem is that , while pitting under cautions, the AI cars often bump you in the rear while entering the pits, causing you damage.

NASCAR Heat offers multiplayer support, but it is not nearly what that of NASCAR Racing 3 offers. There are very few features for multiplayer included with NASCAR Heat. Players are required to obtain the IP address of the race they wish to connect to, and connect using the built in TCP/IP feature. The big problem with this is that there's no great method of obtaining an IP address. A few third party programs have been released to obtain a list of race IP's, but nothing has been very successful to this point . One major problem with NASCAR Heat Multiplayer feature is the inability to have cautions during multiplayer events. One great feature with NASCAR Heat's multiplayer capabilities is the ability to join a race while in progress, and act as a spectator of the event until another race begins.