Auto Modellista marked itself apart from others of the same genre with cel-shaded graphics, which gave a hand-drawn and cartoon-like appearance. Despite its unique style and large amount of simulation-esque detail, there was widespread claim of poor handling dynamics, which presumably lead to the commercial failure of the game for its Japan and European releases. In 2003, Capcom attempted to address these claims with Auto Modellista: US Tuned, containing the new content made for the later North American release plus various tweaks to gameplay. This was the version that would eventually wind up as a GameCube and Xbox game, with the latter due for release in Europe in April 2004. Regardless, the claims still persisted; many distributors predicted that sales of the game were going to be poor, and generally refused to carry it. Also in 2003, Auto Modellista received a followup in the form of Group S Challenge for the Xbox, released specifically for the American market. Capcom has not been involved with driving games since, although it did publish some games based on MotoGP developed by Milestone srl, and included Mega Man Battle & Chase, a racing game based on the Mega Man franchise, in the Mega Man X Collection.
Gameplay
Auto Modellista attempts to be a very technical racing game, with an immense amount of available parts and settings for the selection of cars provided to the player. Various aspects of each car can be tuned, allowing the player to tweak the performance of the car. In the Garage mode, the player is granted the ability to select one of four tire types which affect road grip in regard to the weather conditions on the race track. Other options include brakes, suspension, Turbines, Mufflers, Computer, the engine, "Final Gear", and Weight Reduction. Auto Modellista's customisation options also extends to visual enhancements, allowing the player to choose from many different color combinations, hood and spoiler types, plus the ability to add badges, stickers and even create license plates. Engine swaps are also available, for example, the Subaru 360 can have EJ20T in place of its EK32. Swapped engines cannot be retuned in the game. A large aspect of the game was its online mode, with online races supporting up to 8 players. This functionality were removed from the original US and European releases, but was added back into the US Tuned editions of the game. The online mode of Auto Modellista has since been terminated, and cannot be used in any versions of the game.
Development
Auto Modellista was a part of an initiative from Capcom's Production Studio 1 to develop three network focused games on the PlayStation 2. The other games were Monster Hunter and Resident Evil Outbreak. Capcom's plan was that at least one of the games would become a million seller. Both Monster Hunter and Resident Evil Outbreak eventually became million sellers.
Reception
The game received "mixed or average reviews" on all platforms according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave the PS2 version a score of 30 out of 40.
