Classic Racing Games

I posted in the Wii thread about how awesome the Wii is at emulating older systems when you hack it. That reminded me about all the older racing games I still love to play. Let's talk about them!

Here's my post from that thread to start us off: -Dragster

-Pole Position

-Enduro

-Bump n Jump (Love the cover art!)

-Turbo

-Outrun

-Hang On

-Super Monaco GP

-Rad Racer

Some more:

-Top Gear

-RC Pro Am

-F1 Race

-Hard Drivin'

-Al Unser Jr's Turbo Racing (I really wanted to go to the Challenge last year so he could sign my copy )

-Virtua Racing

I really liked Super Off Road and Test Drive 3 back in the day. While TD3 was a bit brutal as far as realism it had an open world which wasn't seen much until recently. Like a crude Forza Horizon. We enjoyed hitting the chickens that wandered around the farm areas.

I could go down a rabbit hole here but I'm just going to post two for now:

Stunts! I still play this to this day. Not only is it a great driving game (and was a technology tour de force in its time!), but it's conclusive proof of how a full track editor can extend the longevity of a game to the moon and back. I probably made hundreds of tracks for this over the years, and yeah, I still have them all. There are even some extra add-on cars that can be found online - somewhere along the line the copy of it that I play acquired a Skyline R32 for example.

Lotus III! I still play this one too. Doesn't have a full track editor but has a variable-based track "constructor" which is gimmicky but works well enough. The music is super catchy and memorable too, by legendary Amiga composer Patrick Phelan.

This one's probably responsible for why I bought an Elan M100 in real life. In fact the first thing I did when I got the car was stuck the Lotus III soundtrack in the CD player and went cruising with the top down.

is rFactor classic yet?

Im a few years late to the party but just loaded it up on my old computer and am having a blast with some of the mods and tracks available for download. Primarily the project D mod and many of the drift circuits and touge style courses.

Not sure if its the best sim out there but the force feedback is communicative and its fun to slide the cars around. Reminds me a lot of Forza 4.

Jay wrote: I could go down a rabbit hole here but I'm just going to post two for now: Stunts! I still play this to this day. Not only is it a great driving game (and was a technology tour de force in its time!), but it's conclusive proof of how a full track editor can extend the longevity of a game to the moon and back. I probably made hundreds of tracks for this over the years, and yeah, I still have them all. There are even some extra add-on cars that can be found online - somewhere along the line the copy of it that I play acquired a Skyline R32 for example. Lotus III! I still play this one too. Doesn't have a full track editor but has a variable-based track "constructor" which is gimmicky but works well enough. The music is super catchy and memorable too, by legendary Amiga composer Patrick Phelan. This one's probably responsible for why I bought an Elan M100 in real life. In fact the first thing I did when I got the car was stuck the Lotus III soundtrack in the CD player and went cruising with the top down.

Ultimate stunts. Was a crowd sourcedupdate to stunts. Flaky but fun. You can still dl all the code and the beta. The final never got done.

I really should go through my game collection and review some of these. I have a ton of these old racing games. I did a review of Dragster on the Atari 2600 over on BangShift last year and was surprised to see some pro racers actually played this game when they were kids!

I've also been meaning to head up to Funspot in NH to do a story on some of the ancient arcade racers they have up there. Some of them are really cool and have real gauges! I know that Atari Drag Race and Midway's Wheels and Wheels II have Sun Tachometers built into them, which actually work! And yes, they have a full sized, sit-in-the-cockpit Hard Drivin' with the three pedal setup.

SilverFleet wrote: I really should go through my game collection and review some of these. I have a ton of these old racing games. I did a review of Dragster on the Atari 2600 over on BangShift last year and was surprised to see some pro racers actually played this game when they were kids! I've also been meaning to head up to Funspot in NH to do a story on some of the ancient arcade racers they have up there. Some of them are really cool and have real gauges! I know that Atari Drag Race and Midway's Wheels and Wheels II have Sun Tachometers built into them, which actually work! And yes, they have a full sized, sit-in-the-cockpit Hard Drivin' with the three pedal setup.

I have a pair of fun spots in orlando. I should go. Id review all the arcade drivers at disney quest....but theyre all broken.

ROAD BLASTERS!!! Beating it at Chuckie Cheese's is still a golden memory.

Not sure what qualifies as old, but...

Circa 1993 I had this on 3DO. Loved it.

1991

Both are more action than pure racing, but pretty awesome.

In reply to ProDarwin:

YEAH!!! I remember Crash and Burn for the 3DO, it was a pack in title and it was mind blowing at the time. I still have a 3DO, and I have Road Rash and the very first Need for Speed.

In reply to mndsm:

Are you sure it's the same place? The only one I know of is in Laconia NH.

http://www.funspotnh.com/index1.html

It's also the home of the American Classic Arcade Museum, aka classic gaming HEAVEN. Seriously. People travel here from across the world just to play games here. If you've ever seen the movie King of Kong, they filmed parts of it there. The place is unbelievable.

SilverFleet wrote: In reply to ProDarwin: YEAH!!! I remember Crash and Burn for the 3DO, it was a pack in title and it was mind blowing at the time. I still have a 3DO, and I have Road Rash and the very first Need for Speed.

Like a moron, I sold my 3D0 an all of its games for $25 like 4 years ago :(

Man what I wouldn't give to have all my old games back. I'm very envious of your collection.

Anyone else remember the micromachines racing games for sega genesis I think it was? Those were my jam.

i never had it but remember the micro machines racing

carmageddon series is certainly classic. I believe you can get the original as an app store game now on phones and tablets.

I had a game called Megarace 2 on PC that I played through several times. The graphics for the time were pretty awesome.

I remember the Micro Machines games! There was one on the NES as well.

Want a history lesson? There was an intriguing game we never got here in the States: Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally.

Over in Japan, there was a peripheral for their version of the NES (the Nintendo Famicom) called the Famicom Disk System. This was basically a floppy drive for the NES, and games came on proprietary disks. The games had better graphics and sound, and you could save your games on the disk as opposed to having to remember a password. Games like Metroid and Castlevania II had passwords here because they came out on discs there.

Anyway... they also got some games we didn't, like this sweet rally game! It was the sequel to Famicom Grand Prix: F1-Race, which we got here in the form of a later Game Boy port. You had to select a vehicle from three types: a rally car, a 4x4 van, or a truck-based buggy, keep it maintained, and not break the damn thing to win. It was based on the Paris-Dakar Rally, and was very cool.

In reply to SilverFleet:

They are....not the same. I am far more jealous of yours.

Spy hunter. You can just hear the music cant you?

POD https://www.gog.com/game/pod_gold

Rollcage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWGawtEFL8w

F-Zero

A bit more modern than a lot of the things posted here. This in my book was the first game that really got the physics corect. The graphics were still pritty bad but I spent hours and hours playing with this.

In reply to dean1484:

I completely forgot about that game until now!I remember buying an "EA Racing Pack" that had that game, a NASCAR game, and a few others for the PC years ago.

SilverFleet wrote: In reply to dean1484: I completely forgot about that game until now!I remember buying an "EA Racing Pack" that had that game, a NASCAR game, and a few others for the PC years ago.

That is how I got it as well.

The Internet Archive hosts a bunch of abandonware and freeware DOS games, complete with emulator. Everything runs in your browser. https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

For example, Stunts is here:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Stunts_1990

You'll also find The Oregon Trail and a bunch of other simulators from the 80's and 90's. They even have the Ford Simulator, so you can drag race the heck out of a Ranger Splash.

I remember having to run a graphics emulator in order to run Test Drive on my dad's XT clone with a monochrome display.

What about tearing through the streets of San Francisco in the Sledgehammer thanks to Vette!:

The VW New Beetle wasn't the speediest racecar in the world, but Midtown Madness got a lot of play:

By far, though, my guiltiest pleasure (and I've got to go see if I can find a way to play this now EDIT: $10 on Steam, so much for working on a motor swap today...) was:

I put a ton of hours into that game and it's probably why the course workers get a little nervous when I'm on course at a Rallycross...

wae wrote: I put a ton of hours into that game and it's probably why the course workers get a little nervous when I'm on course at a Rallycross...

We used to play the heck out of that game. The funny thing was, none of us ever realized that you could repair your car in level, so levels would last an hour or more as we limped our broken cars around.

I'm still proud of the time I killed the APC. THAT is a fun vehicle to drive around