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NASCAR Heat 2002, the first PS2 game from Monster Games, shipped with 4 control schemes to choose from. One of those control schemes was called “Shoulders”, and mapped throttle/brake to R2/L2. This translates really well to modern gamepads, allowing the player to use triggers for precise throttle control.
For unknown reasons, NASCAR: Dirt to Daytona removed this control scheme. What makes this decision even more puzzling is a fact that NASCAR DtD was also released on GameCube, a console with pressure sensitive triggers in place of PS2’s shoulder buttons!
With this code, I restored a full “Shoulders” controls set for the game, copied from NASCAR Heat 2002.
NTSC-UWhen investigating the game’s code for the shoulders mapping cheat, I noticed that NASCAR DtD (but not NASCAR Heat 2002 or Test Drive EoD) still updates button mappings for Look Left/Look Right actions, albeit it always updates them with an empty mapping. I looked into that more closely and found that these actions are fully functional but unused. With this cheat, I replace the stock functionality of the right analog stick (Throttle/Brake) with key bindings to look around.
Note: When “uninstalling” the cheat, please follow the instructions in the PNACH file! Removing it without first making the code unmap the newly added controls will leave camera controls permanently mapped in the savegame.
When creating a new driver profile in NASCAR DtD, the birth years of the player are limited to the 1925-1986 range. In 2021 that limit doesn’t really make sense anymore, so in this cheat, I lifted it enough to future proof it for a very long time – with valid dates now being in the 1900-2100 range.
