The Top 10 Most Influential Racing Games Ever - IGN (original) (raw)
Whatever your preference is on racing games there's no denying the fact that the racing category is one of gaming's longest-running and most steadfast genres. Here's a list of some of the most important and influential racing games in history; games that have etched their names in the books as some of the greatest in their field and that have gone on to inspire many, many equally great racers.
Honourable Mention: Driver
Not a racing game in the traditional sense, Driver is nonetheless a hugely influential ancestor of modern, open-world racing. Durell Software’s largely-forgotten 1986 game Turbo Esprit is rightfully credited as the world’s first free-roaming driving game but 1999’s Driver was a real breakthrough for driving games, introducing the world to all the joy of ripping and weaving through a living, three-dimensional city.
In a lot of ways Driver paved the road for similarly genre-defining racers like the original Midnight Club, also notable for its pioneering use of open world environments for racing rather than predefined circuits.
Not exactly a racing game, but it was a massive milestone for the genre nonetheless.
10: Indianapolis 500: The Simulation
The UK Formula Three game Revs (released on the BBC Micro in 1984 and on Commodore 64 the following year) is generally regarded as the first true racing simulator. Unlike its contemporaries at the time Revs made an attempt at proper realism, featuring the ability alter wing settings and boasting a cockpit view with an animated tachometer and rudimentary rear-view mirrors, a 3D race circuit, and some crude but effective on-track opponents.
It’s Papyrus Design Group’s 1989 classic Indianapolis 500: The Simulation, however, that is more often credited with truly kick-starting the concept of the hard-core racing simulator. Indianapolis 500 featured just the one oval track but allowed players to tweak down force, tyre pressure, and more. You could compete up to the full 500 miles in a field of 33 cars but, just like real racing, smack the wall on the 199th lap and you were done.
Or, you know, the very first lap.
Indianapolis 500: The Simulation heavily influenced the path for racing simulators well into the ’90s, inspiring competitors like World Circuit: The Grand Prix Racing Simulation and Grand Prix II, and setting the bedrock for Papyrus’ own IndyCar and NASCAR games, as well as its all-time classic Grand Prix Legends.
9: Street Rod
The idea of buying “used cars” and manually replacing parts dates back almost a decade before Gran Turismo to a cult-favourite 1989 MS-DOS/Amiga game called Street Rod (Forza Motorsport wasn’t the first game to allow engine swaps, folks).
Street Rod is the sensei of all tuning games and places a huge amount of importance in installing as many performance parts into your rides as you can afford. Parts need to be purchased from the classifieds with money you earn from drag racing and street racing, and they need to be mounted manually. They also need to fit (dummy!) and be bolted in correctly lest your car won’t start. For maximum performance cars have to be properly tuned too, and the ancient engine note will even change as you adjust the timing.
Need for Speed Underground, circa 1963.
Visual customisation was also a feature, and your cars could be painted in several colours and spackled with preset stickers.
There’s a lot of depth here for a 26-year-old game. Blow your transmission and you have to buy a new one. Lose a pink slip race and you’re walking home. You also have to keep your cars topped up with fuel.
The long-lasting influence of Street Rod is on clear display in games like Need for Speed Underground and the Forza series, and has been also called out by Finnish team Bugbear as key inspiration for their upcoming demolition derby affair Wreckfest.
8: F-Zero
Surprisingly enough, the further we creep into the future the fewer futuristic racing games we seem to be getting. There was a time, however, where they were cooler than the other side of Bill Murray’s pillow. Wipeout, Rollcage, Fatal Inertia, Extreme-G, and plenty more. The racing was fast and thrilling and, unbound by reality, creators were free to craft vehicles and tracks unearthed from the furthest reaches of their imaginations. Developers all over wanted in.
They all, however, owe their existence to one extremely influential classic: F-Zero.
F-Zero, released on SNES back in 1990, firmly established the high speed futuristic racing sub-genre as we grew to know it.
Anti-gravity > regular gravity.
7: The Duel: Test Drive II
Need for Speed isn’t just the most successful racing video game series in the world, it’s one of the most successful video game franchises of all time.
And it owes a great deal of that success to 1989’s The Duel: Test Drive II.
Developed by Canadian studio Distinctive Software (which was later purchased by EA, renamed EA Canada, and went on to also create the Need for Speed series) Test Drive II was only a slight evolution of the original Test Drive but it was an important one. Like 1986's Out Run before it the Test Drive series differentiated itself from the glut of open-wheel, F1-style racing games popular during this era by focusing on real-life supercars and open-road driving rather than race circuits. This was the crux of both Test Drive and Test Drive II, and both featured in-game police cruisers who would chase you for speeding. The crucial tweak Test Drive II brought with it that wasn’t present in the first was an opponent car to race.
What a novelty; a non-EA game with a Porsche in it!
Test Drive 2 was also able to be augmented with expansion packs featuring more cars and track scenery; standard fare these days with the rise and rise of post-release DLC for racing games over the past two generations.
6: Daytona USA
The fact that, to this day, Daytona USA machines are still resting proudly in arcades and bowling alleys the world over speaks volumes about the impact and importance of Sega’s all-conquering racing legend.
Daytona USA, perhaps the most recognisable arcade racing game of all time and the highest-grossing sit-down cabinet ever, remains a shining example of arcade racing done oh so right. Hitting arcades in 1993/1994 Daytona USA went head-to-head with Namco’s similarly cutting-edge Ridge Racer. Both featured texture mapping which gave the games far more depth than the likes of Virtua Racer, and Ridge Racer certainly enjoyed the better home release conversion, but Daytona USA’s eight-player action made it king of the arcade.
Octagon tyres, because who says you can't re-invent the wheel?
5: Super Mario Kart
Super Mario Kart is not only the progenitor of the kart racing sub-genre; it’s consistently ranked as one of the best games of all time.
First launched in Japan and North America in 1992 (it arrived in European territories in early 1993) the original Super Mario Kart went on to sell over 8 million copies, making it the third-best selling SNES game of all time.
Super Mario Kart’s simple yet incredibly addictive battle racing have forever defined the entire kart racing genre. Hordes of developers have since made attempts to replicate Super Mario Kart’s winning formula in their own kart racers. Apogee released Wacky Wheels for MS-DOS in the wake of Super Mario Kart, and Sega also followed suit with Sonic Drift and much later with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. But there have been plenty more – Crash Team Racing, Muppet RaceMania, ModNation Racers, Speed Freaks (or Speed Punks in North America), and many others. Even if you actually harbour a preference for one or more of the latter over Nintendo’s original trendsetter, there’s absolutely no denying the massive influence Super Mario Kart has had on the racing category.
Hail to the Kong, baby.
4: OutRun
OutRun was a sharp departure from Namco’s extremely popular Pole Position formula, ditching the open-wheelers for the raked gills of a Ferrari Testarossa and opting for exotic, sun-drenched European streets over largely bland racetracks.
OutRun creator Yu Suzuki regards 1986’s Out Run as a “driving game’ rather than a “racing game” but, while it’s a subtle but important distinction for Suzuki, OutRun is still very much a classic, race-against-the-clock experience. OutRun has proven to be a hugely influential force on the genre, and traces of OutRun DNA can be found in series like Test Drive, Need for Speed, PGR, and Burnout. Even modern racers like the Forza Horizon games and DriveClub are still, in a lot of ways, respectful nods to the spirit of the original OutRun.
With selectable "radio stations", undulating tracks, and a killer cockpit-style cabinet, OutRun was unlike any racing game out there in 1986. Innovative and extraordinarily successful, OutRun remains a titan of the racing genre.
And a terrible advocate for seatbelts.
3: Virtua Racing
Virtua Racing wasn’t the first racer to feature 3D polygonal graphics; that distinction belongs to Namco’s Winning Run which, released in 1988, was admittedly quite ahead of its time. Atari’s arcade classic Hard Drivin’ (1989) also predates Virtua Racing, as do the memorable PC gems Hard Drivin’ inspired: Stunt Driver and Stunts (or 4D Sports Driving as it was known as in some territories).
However, Virtua Racing’s bleeding-edge 3D models, complex backdrops, and blistering framerate were unlike anything we’d ever seen. Racing games have always been incredible showcases for new technology and, at the time, the gizmos providing the juice for Sega’s arcade jewel were as new as they got.
That jerk always falls over.
Virtua Racing also allowed us to toggle between four different views, including chase cam and first-person view – a feature it’s hard to imagine a modern racing game without.
Virtua Racing was the game that showed the masses what the future of racing games was going to look like and laid the foundation for arcade royalty like Daytona USA and Sega Rally Championship to follow.
2: Gran Turismo
Back in the late ’90s racing simulators were a rare breed on console. Something like 1997’s excellent TOCA Touring Car Championship, available on PC but also brought to the original PlayStation, was an uncommon treat.
Gran Turismo changed all of that. First released in Japan in late 1997 and elsewhere around the world in May 1998, Gran Turismo quickly became a global phenomenon. It went on to not only become the PlayStation’s best-selling game but the grandfather of all modern console racing sims.
Which explains the wrinkles.
Not bad for a game assembled by a tiny team that varied between seven to 15 people.
Gran Turismo’s scope was honestly quite unprecedented. Need for Speed II (released in early 1997) boasts nine licensed cars. Gran Turismo has 140, all with their own tuning options, racing modifications, and nuanced handling. It also has 11 tracks. All squished onto a compact disc. It was legitimately hard to comprehend.
Series creator Kazunori Yamauchi expected the original Gran Turismo to be a niche game. History shows it was anything but. Gran Turismo redefined what we expected from a racing game and remains the blueprint upon which even today’s console racing sims are based.
1: Pole Position
Sega’s somewhat forgettable Turbo in 1981 may be regarded as the first racing game to feature the now-ubiquitous chase cam view but it was Pole Position – released a year later in 1982 – that made it truly standard, alongside many other examples of the racing genre’s most central conventions.
Developed by Namco (although published by Atari in North America) Pole Position featured a drastically better-looking third-person view and was the first racing game based on a real-world racing circuit (Fuji Speedway in Japan). It also introduced checkpoints, and was the first to require a qualifying lap that players need to complete before being permitted to race. The success of Pole Position, which was the highest-grossing arcade game in North America in 1983, cemented the genre in place for decades to come and inspired a horde of other racing games to follow in its slipstream.
Designed by Toru Iwatani, the creator of Pac-Man, Pole Position may not be quite as celebrated as Namco’s iconic puck-faced pill popper but it’s definitely one of the most influential games of its era, racing or otherwise, and without doubt one of the most important racing games ever made.
We might, er, ignore the cigarette advertising; the '80s were a tough time for all of us.
Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. Racing games are his jam. You can advise him on the games he forgot to squeeze in here on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.