Favourite Retro Racing Games

Racing games have garnered emerging popularity over the past few years. That's one major reason why people go crazy about their journey of playing racing games. But the humble roots of these games can be dated back to an earlier time. To give you a great starting point, you can begin your racing game journey by indulging in the following favourite retro racing games of all time.

Atari Night Driver

The idea behind Night Driver is straightforward: your car's headlights illuminate the posts on both sides of the street. The objective is to pay attention to the road for as long as necessary. The viewing position made the whole thing so unique over 40 years ago. The game of Night Driver is widely regarded as ushering in the whole range of 1^st person racing games.

Photo Credit: upload.wikimedia.org

Moto-Cross

Moto-Cross arrived with a 3D and 3^rd person perspective. It happens to be the first haptic version in the world of racing games. The gamer controlled a driver with handlebars on machines similar to the actual bike. All you need is to turn the handlebars only to see the bike corners. Twist them, and the bike would just start accelerating. The bars are going to vibrate right when crashing into the opponent.

Sega Turbo

Sega made a huge step forward in 1981 when they released the very first racing game with a 3rd person perspective. And in Turbo, gamers could see the whole vehicle right from behind. This viewpoint gradually became the norm.

Pole Position

Pole Position set the most significant milestone in the history of racing games – it was based on a genuine racing track and happened to be the very first to include the qualifying lap. Before proceeding to the real Grand Prix, Formula 1 racers had to undergo a time trial. Furthermore, Pole Position enhanced the third person experience greatly.

REVS

Arcade gaming may be an exciting activity, but at times you simply wouldn't wish to leave home to play some games. In the year 1984, Geoff Crammond published the edition of REVS, the unauthorised simulation of the season of British Formula 3. This was a super hit over the years!

Hang-On

Yu Suzuki happened to be the designer of this title that created the popular series Shenmue later on. The 1st and 2nd editions of the Shenmue version, Hang-On, had been included as the mini-game. Just in case you did not have a chance to test this game in the arcade halls back during the 80s, you can get an opportunity to see Hang-On elsewhere.

Photo Credit: upload.wikimedia.org

Final Lap

The final lap is the successor to the Pole Position game. Players need to race on the Suzuka Circuit in the licensed Formula One circuit. So, even when you do not have too many friends (less than eight) to enjoy the game, it can still give you a standalone experience. The cabinet comes with a seat. The graphics in the previous version were purely a treat to your eyes. The driver's vehicle looks immensely realistic as well.

Indianapolis 500

Although the titles ventured into the sphere of arcade racing games, it was the first great leap that Papyrus Design Group took, coming out with an attractive simulation! Indianapolis 500 got launched in 1989 and attracted popularity amongst an array of players!

Hard Drivin'

Hard Drivin' unveiled a novel level of realism to arcades, featuring real-time 3D graphics, a manual gearbox, and the clutch. It even used a total of TMS34010 processors, which were among the earliest programmable graphics method chips or GPUs as they are now known.

The unique Sega Video Driver

Sega introduced an unusual and stunning game for racing aficionados in 1986: the Sega Video Driver was the real portable toy. RetroManCave has an illustration in the extensive collection and has offered some information about the one-of-a-kind machine:

The other top retro racing games are:

11. Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco Grand Prix II
12. F-Zero
13. Rock n' Roll Racing
14. R.C. Pro-Am
15. Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off-Road
16. Enduro Racer
17. Night Driver
18. Top Gear
19. Rad Racer
20. Spy Hunter

Hence, these are the fan-favourite retro racing games that you can enjoy playing.