@marlfuchs2 Love this post. I’ve tried most of the games you mention here but I’m downloading BeamNG now.
I do really like Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero’s approach to challenging other racers but I think I liked it even more in Burnout Paradise and it’s something I wish a game like Forza Horizon had. You’re just driving around this big open map listening to music when a Rival jets past you with a little flourish as a challenge. You chase them down and uh, get them to smash into a tree or whatever, netting you their car. It’s ridiculously videogamey but just about the most compelling thing you can have happen in an open world setting besides just seeing the sights.
A pretty great classic game I feel not enough folks know about is Roadblasters by Atari, which I‘d kind of describe as Outrun meets Deathrace 2000. You just drive down the road, shooting other cars. The sit-down version of the arcade machine has a beautiful 1980s aesthetic and the gameplay is surprisingly chill even though you’re shooting and trying to keep your fuel gauge up. I know there are ports for Genesis and Lynx but I haven't played them (yet)
I really like racing games but almost exclusively play them in the arcades. I'm another one of those dedicated players (ie suckers) who has sunk hundreds of dollars into Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune 5 getting multiple cars fully powered up. But it's so much fun and easily my favorite modern-era arcade racer!
Because I don't have much experience with console-based racing games, I'm really appreciating this thread and am looking forward to expanding my experience with the genre!
(If nothing else I really ought to try the Forza Motorsport 3 that came with my Xbox 360 that I literally never once put into the disc drive...)
@marlfuchs2 I am going to second you on Most Wanted 2005 being the best NFS game. Everything the later Criterion NFS games do is done better in Burnout Paradise. But those cop chases and how insane they get without feeling impossible is really something special. Its got that perfect balance of of being on the knife’s edge. Its kind of like in MGS V, where you don’t exactly want to go into high alert mode, but when you do, there is a real rush to rolling with it.
On the Wipeout discussion I also am going to come out in favor of Pulse. The handling just feels tighter and the aesthetic sharper and edgier in the right direction. I will also say, that the PSP incorporating letting you use your own MP3s heavily slants my decision, I mostly played the game with the Cold Storage tracks from the original game and it just felt right. I really should sit down with HD and 2048 some time… I actually (like a madman) bought 8 Vita TVs and copies of 2048 so I could one day set up a full lan play of that game
Ive Probably put 100000 hours into racing games over the last 10 years. I got really hooked on granturismo and it essentially turned me into a car person. I eventually bought a G27 racing wheel and have been even more of a freak about it since. That wheel though, 10 years of flawless service.
A wheel is a fine investment in improving a lot of games you wouldn’t expect through emulation. The extra level of control you can achieve on N64 racers in particular is kinda shocking. As someone who had a sanfrancisco rush cab at their place of employment through highschool and played it a couple times a week I can tell you that with the right setup (120 degree steering, spring emulation at about 50%) the SFRush games on N64 are basically arcade perfect. I can smell the greasy food and cigar smoke from Glory Days Bar and Grill when I boot it up.
My most recent obsession is Tokyo Extreme Racer Drift 2 or TXRD2 by the amazing (Game Studio) Genki. Its a basically forgotten PS2 racing game excursively about racing and drifting on laser scanned Japanese mountain roads. Granturismo’s traction simulation really breaks down once you get too much wheel spin or too much momentum in the drive train, and this game fixes all of that. It just feels like a car should. By day you do challenge races against other drivers to build you rep and earn money, you can surf the in-game message boards, read email, answer challenges, get sponsors and meet rivals. At night you can race said rivals, take on opponent racing gangs and earn access to new mountains around japan. All the gangs and rivals have back stories and personalities they express through their cars and driving styles.
The reason its forgotten, and the reason it received low scores is because it is the hardest out of the gate racing game I have ever even heard of. Drifting is incredibly difficult because there is no drifting mode the car enters like a ridge racer or even TXRD1. They don’t tell you what cars are good at what. The roads are barely 2 lanes wide if that. Its full physics and cars by their nature are not happy being sideways. You are expected to be an inch off the guard rail and if you stuff it in corner 3 the guy you are racing is probably gone. Better luck tomorrow kid! It feels like they spent 90% of their dev budget perfecting the physics and race courses while the rest of the staff had too much fun writing racer bios and then there were like: “oh shit we need to make a game”.
Its not for most people but it is exactly for me.
My other Obsession is Wangan Midnight for PS3.
This almost isn’t a racing game.
It breaks down like this:
If your car is pushed too hard it will explode, no question. Keep watching your temp gauge while trying to max out your speed.
You have enormous horse power. Just stupid speed.
You are on a highway with full traffic.
Your headlights only illuminate so far unless you hold down the high-beam button.
You must chase someone down through said traffic.
The fastest way to drive is to drive at someone’s bumper to get in their wake and then veer away at the last possible second into another wake. When drafting a car like this you not only accelerate faster its easier on your always-about-to-explode engine.
This game has incredible level design… You might be thinking, you mean the roads right? NO!
The traffic is the level design! Its the same every time, and its color coded! Its like bullets in a shooter!
But there isnt just traffic there are corners and dips and rises. And as you go faster through the traffic pattern you encounter different parts of the traffic pattern at different points in the roadway. So if getting a big boost from drafting a truck is important to hit your speed goal on the straight maybe you slow down in the previous corner so that truck is where you want it. Or maybe you find yourself setting a better time than ever before! Uhoh! Now can you remember the traffic pattern and think about how it will effect the next 4 corners?!!
Think about that while you are going 200mph, dodging traffic and watching your engine health gauge!
Its a perfectly tuned adrenaline machine!
Its in Japanese but you can get by with a little help from the google translate app or some trial and error.
Oh I have a copy of this, and I probably should have mentioned it in the post, but it’s one I try to get into every so often, you are right that the early game is absolutely brutally hard to the point where I can’t get a few in-game days into it before putting it back down.
What I adored about Tokyo Xtreme Racer was how Genki got the general vibe of racing strangers on the freeway by the simple use of a health meter. It really was just teenagers speeding recklessly until they lost each other or one of the drivers gave up/got tired of it.
I appreciate all these posts (special shoutout to @marlfuchs2), and most of the games I like have been mentioned. Outrun 2006! R4 and Rage Racer! Wipeout XL! God darned Roadblaster! But I’ll add a few thoughts:
tokyo xtreme racer not only captures that great racing against a rival feeling with the simplicity of a health bar, it ALSO has one of the best camera angles for SPEED in a racing game. You couldn’t really get so low and so close to the car in a game that took place on streets, or basically anything but a highway, so they turned that limitation into a real bonus.
the ridge racer series, especially starting with rage racer, made me feel like I was really going up and down hills. good camera angle on this one too.
Road Rash. A combat racer to be sure, but the first two games gave a great sense of speed, and the inertia on turns made you feel like you were really fighting against physics, which was cool.
Power Drive Rally on the Jaguar! We haven’t mentioned many top-down racers but I like watching a little sprite go round a track, and this particular one did a nice job of showing reflections in the water, about a million frames of animation on all the vehicles, little headlights and honk button… it’s cute as heck.
Super Off-Road. Love the dumb little jumps and upgrades and nonsense.
Most of my additions were 2D but only because most of the 3D greats have been mentioned. I really think driving games are best in 3D, regardless of the fact we continue to work on a superscaler one.
[edit] I’m adding a video of power drive rally because I don’t think most people know it? it’s cute. As a bonus, when I was a youth I thought the guy was saying “a cute left, a cute right” not “acute left.”
@exodus I have always been curious about Power Drive Rally. I feel like top down over head CAN work, in that I had a blast the one time I ran through Neo Drift Out. It has a great sense of speed and the feeling of slingshoting around corners is up there with drifting in later 3D games.
One of my favorite memories is playing Turbo Outrun in a little arcade room in a beach side hotel in florida.
The room was all tile and glass. All the machines had their attract mode music turned off but their game play sound up kinda high and the FM jams had this really wonderful reverb.
I can't believe I posted about Neo Drift Out before I posted about Sega Rally 1995. Up there with Outrun 2006 as a near perfect game. My only gripe is that difficulty spikes up so quickly. I wish I could get into any of the other games in the series as much as the first, but being on Saturn when I only had a few games really skews things. PS2 remake is also good.
@sosadillatron I also love the Sega Ages Outrun! 3D faux super scaling (whatever the heck that means) looks real good and smooth.
Let’s talk about:
Gran Turismo / Tourist Trophy @marlfuchs2 Gotta love that Nurburgring! A whole game in a single track. I played it most in GT5. I made a custom playlist called the 90s Mom Drivin’ Mix and when I couldn’t sleep I would drive the Nurburgring in a car with bad suspension and grip until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. This little activity alone made GT5 one of my all-time favorite racing games. I really want to play a newer one but maybe I’ll just wait for 7. It’s probably good I don’t have a great PC or I’d have all the sim racing games out there and probably a too-expensive wheel at this point.
I’ve had a similar experience to other people in here where sim games have me thinking about cars in a different way. My family considers me the car blind guy which is true but I’ve blown their minds with random car facts/ideas I picked up from GT etc.
Daytona USA
Though the older non-arcade versions could be a lot of fun, Daytona wasn’t “real” to me until the Dreamcast version which was replaced in my mind by the PS3/XBLA version (I’ll take a truer arcade experience over the extra stuff from the DC). The manual transmission drift is so beautiful I almost wish all other racing games with lesser drifts would just get rid of the mechanic and focus on something else. I’ve heard a lot of complaints that the steering is too sensitive in the DC/PS3/XBLA versions but what’s happening is the entire range of steering is directly mapped to the stick. It’s a different philosophy than most racing games that have a kind of timed steering increase * analog intensity solution but it’s the right approach for Daytona’s style. You do have to be a little delicate on those mild turns!
Virtua Racing
Similar to Daytona USA, most earlier versions were lesser (but cool!) until you get to the switch version (though the PS2 version has an analog stick it doesn’t control much like the original). Also like Daytona, I feel like this game has a lot of hidden depth that people aren’t very aware of either because they only played the old console ports or haven’t given it much time due to the difficulty etc. Something that helps with that is knowing the game is all about time, not necessarily getting first! Your best time might be a third place finish while your next best time might be a first! ALSO like Daytona, your tires wear out and you want to be delicate with your turning to keep them in good shape. Don’t drift your formula 1 car!! Memorize those corners and gears! I love that stuff!!!
F-Zero X
GX is incredible but I believe X is slightly better. They control similarly but X feels more “real” and tactile to me while GX gets into too-light territory. X also has the track editor (by either emulating the DD version or using a custom tool/patcher someone made)!!! For a while there was a little community of weirdos making entire custom F-Zero X patched roms and it was great, I made a few myself.
HSX: Hypersonic.Xtreme
Yeah I’m serious about this one. I believe some real F-Zero X lovers made this one and wanted to give us all a track editor that wasn’t trapped in Japan. That’s pretty much it!! The game unfortunately has some fancy water effects turned on by default that ruin the framerate but you can turn them off in the options!
Also:
Beam NG - I feel like all racing games in the distant future will sort of descend from this game somehow
Extreme G - Love the trashy music + visuals in the first one, great series of games (minus 2 I guess)
Excitebike 64 - Great timed boost mechanic + the feeling of properly hitting a series of hills
Race Drivin/Hard Drivin - The arcade version ported to PS2 is good! Almost feels GTish in terms of simulation
Wipeout - Love the look of 3! I think the whole series would benefit from losing the weapons
Episode 1 Racer - The boost mechanic is so good
Sega Rally - A great “simple drift”, also Colin McRae Rally 2.0. I gotta play Sega Rally 2!
Rush 2 - The stunt mode was proto Beam NG-ish if I want to be generous
Wave Race 64
. . . I’ve just about convinced myself to go get GT Sport. I’ve been getting into those newer F1 games too.
I just tried Tokyo Extreme Racer Drift 2 and wow it oozes cool and confidence in a way that Zero couldn‘t really pull off. Much, much, less forgiving as has been noted. It’s going to take me a lot of practice to learn how to drift in this one because I'm terrible at it out of the gate. Not very intuitive but hey! Wish I could find an instruction manual!
I really love getting to hang out in parking lots chatting with other drivers.
I forgot to mention jet moto, which I‘m not sure if I really truly liked, or if I just thought the water reflections were neat. I’d play a modern jet moto where you can just rip around a swamp in free mode!?
Oh, this reminds me I didn‘t talk about the Rush games, with their dumb shortcuts and high flying tricks and fake physics! I’d love another game like that designed around tracks as The Fun.
They’re good, aren’t they? Each one is a bit too similar to the previous entry for me to buy it every year, but I generally pick up every second or third one and have a good time. I put 2012 on my list because it’s the last one I bought for PC, meaning lots of mods, and my old Driving Force GT wheel works with it, but 2019 is excellent too.
@billy Yeah! I’m sort of new to them but I’m having a good time. I played a little of 2017 and it looks like 2019 is on Game Pass which I happen to have right now so that’s settled. I’m really starting to get that “maybe a racing wheel is a good investment” feeling haha.
