Were Racing Games Good Before the PS2 Era?

[nyka]

Honestly I agree. Though I would rather play Burnout than a realistic racing game.
As much as I hate the music in Paradise City, I love the game

honestly when I play paradise I often mute the soundtrack and just put on the r4 ost or something similar so I feel that. Great game though!

 

[Cu1tur3D_Gam3R]

honestly when I play paradise I often mute the soundtrack and just put on the r4 ost or something similar so I feel that. Great game though!

Personally, I would've put on the Burnout 3 Takedown or Revenge OST, those soundtracks were absolute bangers.

 

[rugal]

good ps1 racing games
crash team racing
turbo prop racing
wipeout

 

[NotReallyHere]

Others have already mentioned Road Rash, Wipeout, and OutRun, so there go some of my first picks! All three are definitely worth checking out. Along with Wave Race 64 - as someone else also mentioned

Others of note:

RC Pro-Am (NES)
Enduro (Atari 2600)
Pole Position (Arcade)
Extreme-G (N64)
Crusin' USA / World (Arcade / N64)
Hydro Thunder (Arcade / Dreamcast)

 

[Morgana Veil]

honestly when I play paradise I often mute the soundtrack and just put on the r4 ost or something similar so I feel that. Great game though!

Been a couple of years since I booted it up. If I recall, you can use your own tunes for the radio on PC. I might be thinking of another Burnout game, though. Apologies if I'm wrong

 

[moonbits]

I think they were good on the PS1/N64 like Rush 2 (childhood game). But it definitely feels like the genre reached its peak when it finally had convincing visual fidelity, physics and frame rate.

 

[Dyne]

As far back as the 80s you had Pole Position which went for the more realistic sim approach and OutRun which was more of a "arcade" racing type (even though they were both arcade games)

 

[dropsmegamega]

I agree, as much as I like stuff like Racing Lagoon, racing games only showed their true potential starting with the PS2 era, as tech got finally capable of physics and effects that truly gave a sense of speed and didn't feel janky

 

[Kremiso]

the imo fabulous TOCA serie started on PS1

 

[ThunderBoy]

Motoracer 1 and 2 were impressive

 

[carb0n0x]

Porsche Challenge on PS1 is a fairly hidden gem, and in my opinion controls quite great once you get the hang of it. I love that they added a mysterious racer (black porsche test driver) that sometimes joins the race and is far better at driving than the others. Also great OST and sound design, seriously try playing it with headphones, it's amazing.

 

[qw90700]

Then it means you didn't live in the era.

For example my all time favorite racing games because you can modify your car are:

Street Rod series on DOS

Zero 4 Champ games on SNES

Top Gear 2 on Sega Genesis (It's also on SNES but I dislike the SNES version's music)

Racing Lagoon on PS1 (my top favorite racing game ever)

There are popular racing games until PS2 era that are good at being a racing game like Micro Machines and Combat Cars and honestly what PS2 brought is better graphics and more variety in customisation, otherwise racing genre was not particularly evolved but actually downgraded since PS1-era and Racing Lagoon was the peak moment lol.

Only in recent times I like Crew 2 because roaming around the whole America + cockpit camera + modification are good ideas yet this is still not a decent step-up from racing games I even played on NES. No racing game cared to be better than Racing Lagoon as of today. If Racing Lagoon didn't exist I would say Zero 4 Champ games were peak in racing genre lol.

 

[Smyth200788]

Porsche challenge was a great early ps1 title which i played loads of as a child. Even had the ps1 accessory steering wheel we were that much into it speed freaks is another fun cart racer and destruction derby although not entirely racing is some of the best fun you will have in a car game on any console. Rollcage is another fun game not many people mention

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I sorta blame Gran Turisomo for shifting dev's focus away from "fun racing game" to "authentic car sim" which...while that's fun for the hardcore car nerds...as far as games go I'll take Daytona USA any day or Ridge Racer !

The two should've coexisted.

 

[Tortuga]

It just you
There was tons of good racing games before """ps2 era"""
Old NFS, Carmageddon, Wipeout, Driver, Midtown Madness, F zero and many more

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I still believe that "it didn't get good until..." is mostly said by people that hasn't actually verified every thing of that genre.