I remember being amazed at how “realistic” the cars looked, nowadays it looks pretty dated.
That game got me into Garbage (the band) though. One of their songs was on the game soundtrack.
First time my brother mentioned it he thought the live play was a commercial / live racing at first. It sounds silly now but at the time the graphics were much better than anything we were used to in racing games. Also back then it wasn’t unknown to have proper live filming for video game commercials. We were both adults at the time too, unsure if that’s worse or better heh.
Now I check out Forza Horizon and am like, yeah that’s digital, nice and shiny but definitely digital.