Papyrus Design Group was founded with the explicit goal of producing true racing simulations rather than arcade approximations. Indianapolis 500: The Simulation was the studio's vehicle for that ambition. The game was developed over 18 months on a budget of $70,000. The field and qualifying order replicated the actual 1989 Indianapolis 500 starting grid, with one deliberate exception: the player's car (number 17) replaced Rich Vogler's number 29, which had qualified 33rd and last. Three real car configurations were available — a yellow Penske-Chevrolet, a red Lola-Buick, and a blue March-Cosworth — each with distinct default setups reflecting their actual performance characteristics.
The game offered four race distances: 10 laps (no damage, no yellow flags), 30 laps (no damage), 60 laps, and the full 200-lap Indianapolis 500. Practice and qualifying sessions were included alongside race events. Practice mode allowed car setup changes to take immediate effect in real time, enabling rigorous back-to-back comparison testing — the kind of iterative tuning familiar to actual racing engineers.
Qualifying required the completion of four laps, with the mean lap time determining grid position. Skipping qualifying placed the player at the back of the field. During race sessions, car setup parameters could only be altered at pit stops, with some settings locked for the duration of the race.
The 32 CPU-controlled cars behaved as racing vehicles rather than obstacles: they could retire with mechanical failures — listed explicitly as bearing, clutch, CV joint, engine, gearbox, ignition, stall, valve, vibration, radiator, or oil leak — or crash and leave wreckage on track. Yellow flags were implemented for 30-lap and longer races; cars slowed to approximately 90 mph under caution, and the circuit was cleared before green conditions resumed. The player's car was subject to tyre and engine damage from significant impacts but was exempt from the random mechanical failures that afflicted AI cars.
A six-angle replay mode covered In-Car, Behind, Track, TV, Sky, and Leader/Crash perspectives. The system retained the previous 20 seconds of racing and triggered the Leader/Crash camera automatically when an accident occurred. The breadth of the replay system was notably advanced for a 1989 PC title.
The 1990 Amiga version was functionally identical to the MS-DOS original with minor differences. A numbering error placed two cars numbered 20 in the field (corrected in the DOS version to car 12, accurately reflecting the 1989 grid). One replay could be saved to disk, as could up to three car setups. Partially completed races could not be saved. Control options included mouse, joystick, and keyboard; the mouse was noted for delivering a particularly smooth and natural driving feel. The extended memory replay feature required the optional 512KB RAM expansion.
Indianapolis 500: The Simulation sold more than 200,000 units by 1994. In Computer Gaming World, auto racer Barry Werger praised the game's graphics, controls, and physical realism, describing it as a "hyper-realistic simulation and a valuable educational tool" while advising casual players to seek lighter alternatives. The Amiga Power readership voted it the ninth-best game of all time on the platform. In 1994, PC Gamer UK ranked it the 38th-best computer game ever released, calling it "pure racing action at its best." In 1996, Computer Gaming World placed it 122nd on its all-time list.
The game's music was composed by Rob Hubbard, then newly appointed as a music director at Electronic Arts.
Indianapolis 500: The Simulation established Papyrus as a studio capable of delivering professional-grade simulation to a consumer audience. The studio's subsequent titles — IndyCar Racing (1993), NASCAR Racing (1994), and the NASCAR franchise through 2003 — built on the physics and design philosophy articulated here. Papyrus co-founder David Kaemmer carried that lineage into iRacing, the modern online sim racing platform, making Indianapolis 500: The Simulation the earliest ancestor of an unbroken simulation tradition still active today.