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.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Is it just me or like, there was pretty much no good racing games in the 16-bit era, and in the 32-bit era we got a couple good ones, but the genre itself only really took off in the PS2 era when hardware became way more powerful? Like, in the PS1 era we had Gran Turismo 1 & 2, Rage Racer and R4, and maybe Need for Speed III if we include some 'okay' games, but I can barely think of good racing games for the Genesis or the SNES, maybe OutRun and Mario Kart.

Compare it to what we got in the PS2 days: Ridge Racer V, Gran Turismo 3 & 4, Need for Speed Underground 1 & 2, Most Wanted, Flatout, Burnout 3, Midnight Club 2 & 3 and the list goes on and on.

Maybe I'm just not well acquainted with these older catalogues but I do think there's fewer good racing games in comparison to other genres like Shooters which pretty much had their golden era in the 16 and 32-bit era.

Am I forgetting some classics? Please enlighten me!

You’re clearly ignoring the biggest market for racing games: Arcades

Thrill Drive is kinda the reason Burnout’s later games focus on crashing into shit

Not to mention Daytona, the second game was arcade exclusive for a minute or the other Ridge Racer games that led to the series even being on console (Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer 2, Rave Racer)

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

Depends on what you mean by good? If you mean enjoyable then yes if you mean accurate then that's a maybe? Accurate for the allowed engine and time.

I love CTR that I still have it today and I also enjoyed Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 when I got the steering wheel and pedals for my PS2.

 

[bjork]

I think you kinda had to be there, but yet. Even something as basic as Super Cycle on the Commodore felt great once you got up to speed. Super Monaco GP felt mindblowing at the time on the Genesis, and others have listed tons of really great racing titles in the thread already.

Let's look at it another way: if there weren't good racing games before then, would they have even bothered by the time PS2 rolled around?

 

[Coon]

Honestly good racing games only came with the PS2. I wasn't very satisfied with those from PS1.

 

[MemeAlert]

Apparently someone never owned a N64.

 

[Aeriththeflowergirl]

Crusin USA

 

[MemeAlert]

You forgot we had peak racing on PS1 with Racing Lagoon

Yes the game that never released outside of Japan was "peak".

 

[UnboundByJunk]

short answer: yes

 

[Scotty]

Absolutely! Mario Kart, the Top Gear games, and Road Rash are three great examples that immediately come to mind.