best racing game ever?

[danph1]

Okay fellow gamers. I'll need your input on what you think is the greatest racing game ever.

I'm going to ask that you hold your selection relative to the time frame that the game was released (ie. more recent games with greater graphics obviously won't be able to compete with older ones if that's not held into account.)
My input. I think the original Need For Speed ranks high (or I may have just been partial to the Lamborghini in it.)

Also, I think Road Rash (circa 1995) for the PC was pretty cool as well.

[TOK]

Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed is my favorite PC racing game, with the perfect balance of simulation and arcade fun. Very cool to have convincing physics along with varied missions.

I think Hard Drivin' by Atari had the biggest impact on me in the arcades. First machine I saw was a sit down, and I was just blown away by the fact that it had a clutch pedal and realistic shifter.
Also loved Ferrari F355 Challenge by Sega. The 3 monitor version was amazing.

[my58vw]

need for speed carbon, gran turismo 4, Moto GP 2006

[SithMaster]

Star wars podracer or mario kart

[mrclean]

Gran Turismo Series as far as best racing "simulation" goes.
Twisted Metal / Destruction Derby series  for "insanity"
Wipe Out for "futuristic"
Mario Kart for "fun"
Super Sprint / Pole Postion / Out Run "Classic"
Rush / Crusin' USA/World / Exotica "Stunts & Tricks"
Star Wars Pod Racing "Movie Theme"
Juice Need For Speed Carbon "Rice Burners"
Corvette, Chevy vs. Ford, Ford Racing series "Advertisement"

There are really tooo many catagories to list I have way too many favorite racers !

[Xiaou2]

 Out Run - Beautiful Gfx.  Great Control. Challenging. Adrenalin pumping:
Feels and reacts Lightning Fast.. lots of 'close calls'.  Great crashes,
spins, etc.  Awesome 'shaking wheel'.  Great 'Tunes'.  Lots of paths
to choose from and master.   
 
 Super Hangon - The FASTEST and most adrenalin pumpin racer
Ive ever played.  Extremely difficult.  Use of Turbo when at proper
speeds = awesome gameplay.  Like outrun, cool crashes.  Vibrating
handlebar (when found working), adds a nice 'motor simulator'
effect.  Use of Brakes is mandatory at times, adding to the
challange.  Shorcuts possible by cutting thru trees and
obsticles on sharp curves (heart stoping to even attempt! : )
Incredible amount of tracks to master.   The Gfx arnt as nice
as Outrun..  but the speed and added gameplay make up
for it. Some Nice tunes.
 
 (Redline Racer for PC is the only game Ive played that
somewhat compared to super hangon)


 Super Sprint - love the power-slide control.  Challenging. Very fast.
Problematic gameplay however..   as the difficulty is either way easy, or
impossible to beat. (at least, thats how I experience it).  Fun 3 player
game    A bit repetitive.

 Ridge Racer - Awesome power slide mechanism = Takes a while to master,
Great gameplay.  Some Cool sound tracks.  Feels somewhat
fast... tho not as fast as out run...  and no cool wrecks.      Long and
varried track. 

   

 
 

[AtomSmasher]

Gran Turismo Series as far as best racing "simulation" goes.

Only if your talking about console games.  If you include PC games, there are far more realistic racing simulations.  GTR2 is my new favorite although netKar pro is probably the most realistic racer there is.

I had a lot of fun with Road Rash on the genesis.
several Need for Speed games were great (and several were not)
Wipeout was a lot of fun back in the day.
Mario Kart also has to be included because has always been an extremely fun game.

[Xiaou2]

 As far as "Simulation" goes, I believe nothing even comes close to
'Hard Drivin'.   The  physics/math   engine in that game is insane.

 I heard they even made a slighty mod'ed version and put them in the
DMV's  to train and or  test people with.

(someone should look into it to see if they can find a boardset for
emulation   )


 

[headkaze]

I will have to say Trackmania Sunrise for the most wild racing experience. The tracks are pretty crazy. I'm looking forward to checking out the new Trackmania in the series.

Anyone remember Stunt Car Racer on Amiga?

[Level42]

Arcade: GTI club

[leapinlew]

My favorite racer = R.C. Pro AM. I love that game. The other racer I played is a little known game called Death Rally. It had Duke Nuke'em in it and it was a very fun game to play.

[monkeybomb]

I don't like the newer game restriction.


Supersprint
Power Drift



Worst
NES Rad Racer - I spent way too much time with that terrible game.

[Stobe]

The ones I spent the most quarters on in the arcades were:

Out Run and Hot Rod (Sega).  I really love Hot Rod, because of its upgrading system.  We had a 4-player "table top" model at our local arcade, and it ate many of my quarters.

On consoles, the Gran Turismo series is always a must have for me.  But I also like the open-ness of other games.  And I've probably spent more time "racing" in the GTA games than any "real" racing games.

-Stobe

[Zeosstud]

In the arcade and on the Dreamcast, Rush 2049.  Also enjoyed Cruisin Exotica.  On my xbox, I have enjoyed Midnight Club 3:Dub Edition and PGR 2.  On my Xbox 360 its been Burnout Revenge, PGR3 and Ridge Racer 6 so far.

Zeosstud

[Loki]

Trackmania series for sure
TM United is the newest one...
TM Nations is free to download and play online

Very cool game.. also trackbuilding rocks

[TOK]

Trackmania series for sure
TM United is the newest one...
TM Nations is free to download and play online

Very cool game.. also trackbuilding rocks

Read up on Starforce before getting involved with the Trackmania series. It causes problems for some people, not for others. It kept making my DVD software bomb out, creating illegal operation errors.

[FrizzleFried]

Starforce = Ass

Hard Drivin' = The shiz

[javeryh]

Burnout Revenge for the 360 is my favorite of all time but it's kind of new.  Other racing games I love are Wave Race 64 for the N64 and Uniracers for the SNES.

[MajorLag]

Gran Turismo (the original) by far. But I haven't played many racing games.

[MPTech]

I LOVE racing games.
My personal favorite is Need for Speed - High Stakes!  (I couldn't get it to run with WinXP, so I configured my PC as a dual-boot with w98, specifically to play NFS!)

btw, we gave my son a PS3 for Christmas and he downloaded a demo of MotorStorm. We saw it in the Video Games store on the display.  It is AWESOME!  Played it for a couple hours in the last couple days!  Crashes are SPECTACULAR!  and the physics are pretty fun!

A question:
What games are good to play in MAME, without a steering wheel? (I know a steering wheel is the only real way to drive, but my cab just has the JS).
I was disappointed I couldn't get Cruizin' to work well (am I missing something, or is it just a wheel game only?)

[Stobe]

I
A question:
What games are good to play in MAME, without a steering wheel? (I know a steering wheel is the only real way to drive, but my cab just has the JS).
I was disappointed I couldn't get Cruizin' to work well (am I missing something, or is it just a wheel game only?)

Some of the 2/3s perspective games were playable with JS.  I think they had jumpers for plugging in either a 360 wheel or joystick.  Like World Rally, 1000 Miglia, etc.

Other "spinner" type games are semi-playable.  I've played quite a bit of Hot Rod with my JS.  But its not quite as fun as whipping the wheel around.

-Stobe

[rdowdy95]

Grand Theft Auto Series
or Simpsons and Hit Run!

RUNNING OVER PEOPLE SI FUN!

[danph1]

I don't like the newer game restriction.

I just wanted to create the considerations in "real terms."  There's nothing wrong with favoring a newer game as long as the older isn't held to the same technology or performance standards. 

[danph1]

Other racing games I love are Wave Race 64

Ah yes, I overlooked this.  I enjoyed this as well.

[missioncontrol]

another vote for Hard Drivin'

in fact last is on my dream list of cabinets to own....

[Dexter]

Outrun, when it first appeared it blew me away. My first arcade racers though were pole position and sprint, they'll always win the nostalgia war with me.

[Leif]

Hands down... SCUD Race/Super GT.

I will do backflips when this game gets emulated and playable.

[Havok]

Put me down for:

Hard Drivn'
Race Drivn'

Awesome game, and cab (cockpit version)

Anyone got one they want to give away in the Northeast? It doesn't have to work...

 

[shardian]

Gran Turismo 2 for me. Me and a roomate actually took turns to complete the marathon races.

Also, nothing beats getting the Pike's Peak car and just holding down the accelerator and still winning races.

[Ahigh]

I think the best arcade racer of all time is Rush 2049 Coin-op. I am biased as I'm proud to say I was the lead programmer on that game.

It used the code from Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin' but was dumbed down to make it earn more money from people who can't actually handle driving a real car through stunt courses.

My favorite console racer is Wave Race 64.  The best arcade racing gameplay for the home I think.

I loved Super Sprint, and I too was totally blown away by OutRun when it came out.

My second favorite arcade racer is Super Hangon.  Has to be standup version, and has to have all the controls and everything working.  But that game, I agree, defines the maximum speed at solid 60hz and what you can do with high framerate and high speed (a big reason I pushed for 60hz NO-DRONES ghosts in the last couple weeks of 2049 was inspiration from Super Hangon -- IE single player racing can be fun too).

3rd favorite is 8-way linked Daytona.  Defined the concept of casual arcade linked racing.  Totally love bumping and extra super duper catchup, and powersliding that one turn in the beginner track.

--
- Ahigh

[Drews Arcade]

arcade=Daytona USA

[Donkey_Kong]

Haven't played any racing games released for the past 4 years or so.

Best all time racing games for me...

1 Motocross Madness 2 -PC (Internet Racing years ago)
2. Midtown Madness 2 or 3 -PC
3. Jet Moto 2 -Playstation
4. Super Sprint -Arcade
5. Turbo Off Road? (With The nitro trucks) -Arcade

[TOK]

Haven't played any racing games released for the past 4 years or so.

Best all time racing games for me...

1 Motocross Madness 2 -PC (Internet Racing years ago)
2. Midtown Madness 2 or 3 -PC
3. Jet Moto 2 -Playstation
4. Super Sprint -Arcade
5. Turbo Off Road? (With The nitro trucks) -Arcade

Motocross Madness 2 was a fantastic racing game. MS just shut down their CD game section of The Zone, effectively killing multiplayer for that whole era of games... Their Mech titles, Midtown Madness, Monster Truck Madness and the two MX Madness games. Pissed me off a little bit, because it was a great place to log on and play if you only had half an hour or so.

[AtomSmasher]

Virtua Racing anyone?  I spent a lot of time playing that on the genesis when I was young.  I think it was the first fully 3D racer.

[Donkey_Kong]

Motocross Madness 2 was a fantastic racing game. MS just shut down their CD game section of The Zone, effectively killing multiplayer for that whole era of games... Their Mech titles, Midtown Madness, Monster Truck Madness and the two MX Madness games. Pissed me off a little bit, because it was a great place to log on and play if you only had half an hour or so.

Wasn't it though! MM2 rocked. I was a regular on The Zone and it was all about Motocross madness 2. That was like at least 5 years ago man! tok we probably raced each other
 

[Loki]

Motocross Madness 2 was a fantastic racing game. MS just shut down their CD game section of The Zone, effectively killing multiplayer for that whole era of games... Their Mech titles, Midtown Madness, Monster Truck Madness and the two MX Madness games. Pissed me off a little bit, because it was a great place to log on and play if you only had half an hour or so.

Wasn't it though! MM2 rocked. I was a regular on The Zone and it was all about Motocross madness 2. That was like at least 5 years ago man! tok we probably raced each other
 

Ahh! I loved that one! .. It was always fun to drive up the big wall, hit the invisible barrier and get blasted waaaay back
Oh! almost forgot Carmageddon 2... now that was an insane game.
I wish they would make some sequels to those 2 (I'll just ignore the existence of Carmageddon TDR2000)

[RetroBorg]

Pole Position
Sega Rally

[allroy1975]

Stunts.  Hands down.  So buggy and difficult but FUN.



man that was good stuff

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a racing game as much as I liked NFS:MW on my xbox.

[ponyboy]

Best Driver:  Ultimate Race for the PC

Ponyboy

[MiKman]

I'd have to say the following are all great arcade racing games.  (At least my favorites).  All better in the arcade too cause I don't have a steering wheel on my cab 

Outrun
Super Offroad
1000 Miglia: Great 1000 Miles Rally
Mille Miglia 2: Great 1000 Miles Rally