I've managed to get my hands on a GD-R for MSR today, Thanks to Kiff! The seller said 'I have put it in a PC and the files are dated 10/10/2000'. It came out the 3rd of November here and 17th of January in the US so I doubt it's anything but the final, but watch this space!
Cooleo, thats awesome news! This could be very encouraging because I remember reading in an interview with the team that changes were being made right up until the last minute (which is why the replay mode is talked about in the manual, but not actually present in the PAL version if I remember correctly). MSR stands up as one of my favourite games of all time. I placed in the top 25 of the VX220/Speedster challenge and won a Swatch watch :-D.
cool find Yeah the finished product MSR changed a lot from the initial screens and videos used to promote it early in development -different car select screens, different low resolution car textures (and maybe car models), different headlight lightbeam graphics, some different textures for background items like water, no gates lining the track - so you could drive onto the sidewalks. It would be interesting if this were an earlier build with those differences, but with the date mentioned, it will probably be pretty close to the retail version. Check out this video of a real early version - it almost looks more like Super Runabout than MSR! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoeEVV4gIzU
