I was a huge fan of another Madness game, Motocross Madness and when I saw a magazine, I think it was PC Gamer, with the demo for Midtown Madness on the disc, I had to splurge and buy the mag (it was $8.50 back then (about $16 today). It was not cheap but it was fun. Plus it would let me get an idea how it would run on my old Gateway computer (not very well so I put this on my back burner for a future purchase).

It was fun but yeah, even back then, the graphics were dated quite a bit. It was just accepted though when dealing with an open world style game like this. If you wanted superior graphics you were limited to something track based like Need for Speed. The freedom of figuring out the best way around the map was part of the fun with these open world racing games. It just took A LOT from what they could do graphically at the time.