My favorite racing game is Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Collection (2013 version). Arcade racing in the style of Mario Kart, it was the one time where Sega did what Nintendont in that genre. Amazing tracks, amazing wide selection of Sega characters to chose as racers (also ralph from ralph breaks movies for some reason), amazing 3 way modes of racing (by land, by water, by air), amazing replayability due to all the racers and modifications possible to choose from, and good price in promotion events.

Wreckfest, Absolute Drift, Art of Rally, BeamNG, New Star GP, F1 23, My Summer Car, Super Woden GP 2.

A bit more unorthodox than the normal recommendations maybe but truly excellent games. Except for F1 they are all quite cheap too.

Art of Rally

Need For Speed: Heat

Does bike racing count? If so: Descenders is amazing

And if that counts, how about Crumble?

Ooh: Turbo Golf Racing, and Kart Rider

Race the Sun?

Favourite racing game is always highly dependent on what I am looking for.

Forza Motorsport 4 (Not Horizon) was one of the best racing simcades i’ve enjoyed playing, it has solid sim-ish racing and it is very satisfying to build up a garage and take a car for a spin on some of the gorgeous original or real life racetracks. Unfortunately, it’s an xbox 360 exclusive and not backwards compatible on xbox one or series x, so not really playable on current systems. I am stll looking for a similar experience on a modern pc.

I also enjoy “Project Cars” and it’s sequel “Project Cars 2”. I can easily play the games on my current PC or the Steam Deck, but the game can be challenging on a gamepad - not impossible, but managable. It does lack some beautiful original tracks as it only features real life circuits and it does lack the satisfaction of having to “earn” and build up a collection of cars and making them your own. Unfortunately, both games have been delisted on storefronts and can no longer officially be purchased, but if you can get your hands on a PC Key, you can still enjoy the games on a modern system.

If I want to enjoy some sim racing, I’ll go with Assetto Corsa or Assetto Corsa Competizione. Great fun with a steering wheel, not really my thing with a gamepad. Modding possibilities for AC are basically endless on PC, but again, lacking some sort of progression system that will allow you to build up a car collection.

Forza Horizon 3 with its Hot-Wheels Expansion was probably my favourite open-world arcade racer, unfortunately it’s also delisted, and while I still have the physical xbox one version, that means I can’t play it on PC. Forza Horizon 4 (with the Lego expansion) is the next best thing (still far better than FH5) and is still available on PC, but will also be delisted in december (grab FH4 while you still can!)

I have also spent a lot of time playing Burnout Paradise, but I still prefer Burnout Revenge over it’s younger open-world brother.

Wreckfest is a great spiritual succesor to the already great Flatout 1/2 and certainly the best banger racer you can currently get. The damage model is very convicing and it’s good fun to wreck some CPU racers.

BLUR - an underrated battle racer, with a really fun 4 player splitscreen. Calling it “Mario Kart with real cars” is, imho a bit too simple, but it does get the point across quite well.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005) - early 2000s yellow/brown tinted aesthetics aside, the game still looks good today and police chases can go on forever. Great fun.

Not a racing game, but a honorable mention: American/Euro Truck Simulator 2, bought it as a joke back then, but it does feel cathartic at times.

Forza Horizon 5. Why 5? Because unlike 4, it doesn’t crash to desktop a lot… although 4 has more to do and a more interesting season system (the tropics has “seasons” but not the snow and scorch temprature swings like people in temperate latitudes are used to), 5 just has a bit more polish, and bold move with taking it to Mexico.

I also am watching the progression of Forza Motorsport 7, because the FM series is basically not-Gran-Turismo and I can play it on my gaming PC (no consoles here).

I used to be all about Gran Turismo back in the day, as well as the DiRT series and even Race Driver. Codemasters games, though, tended to be very arcadey. I need to get Dirt Rally 2, as I played a bit of 1 and it was pretty good.

I also remember Spintires and its spiritual successors Mudrunner and Snowrunner. Fun off-roading sandbox games with mud physics… because no offroading game has even attempted that in the level of detail ST/MR has. Also, the original publisher of ST is the worst, and they’ve broken the original game, just get Mudrunner or Snowrunner for a better experience.

Also, I am on the lookout for spacecraft racecraft games. I want to use my 4 axis stick for something other than Airbus landing challenges.

Also the 1-2 combination of Automation (car company simulator) and BeamNG.drive. You can build a car in Automation and export it to BeamNG to drive around in. Bonus props to BeamNG being the only car sim I know of that has decided to actually model the physics of an automatic transmission. This is something I wished other games like Forza Horizon and Gran Turismo would do, as a lot of modern cars are Automatic only and in every case they just turn the auto into a stick… and it’s terrible, as automatic gear ratios don’t work for manual transmission driving. If we can upgrade the transmission, then we can have a better incentive to replace the slushbox with a crashbox if it’s worth the upgrade, considering that torque converter transmissions are used in offroad racing due to having better resilience against the shock forces from bumps and jumps.

Shoutout to Live For Speed, the surprisingly detailed car racing sim by three bros that even takes clutch temperatures into account. Their latest updates added workshop-style modded cars into the game.

Diddy Kong Racing on N64. There’s no other that come close for me.

You can use either vehicle, hovercraft or plane. Depending on the tracks. Some tracks you can try using any of them. Some are vehicle specific.

You have somewhat open world for you to run around in any of those vehicles mentioned above.

Like in Mario Kart, instead of boxes for you to hit to get items. You hit balloons, and they’re all colored with specific usages. Like red is a rocket, blue is a boost, etc. However, if you hit same color balloon twice or thrice your item upgrade. Like 1 red balloon = 1 rocket, 2 red balloons = homing rocket, three red balloons = 30 rockets for you to spam away. If you hit two different balloons, newest balloon override over your last. There’s no blue shell bullshit in this game tho, that’s either positive or negative for some folks.

There’s mini games, one which I think is really underrated: Dino egg mini game , one where you have to grab egg, drop it in your nest and protect it until you hatch it. You can attack others and steal eggs. You need to hatch three to win the game. You have to find hidden key in one of racing track to unlock the mini game.

And you get to face the boss of each area, each boss has their unique mechanics. You face them 1v1.

Once you beat all tracks, you can do them again but with coin challenge where you gotta gather all coins and win the race. Some tracks are insane hard to point where you have to strategy which coins to take each laps and deal with other racers at the same time. And what’s the worse is the fact that other racers doesn’t care about coins. You have to get all coins and be in first place to clear the track.

Once you beat all coin challenges, you get to battle bosses again which are harder, then you unlock the final boss.

There’s also a tourney you gotta do in each area to unlock secret area with new tracks and harder final boss.

That’s it? Nope, you get to start all over again with the tracks flipped and other racers are harder. Then you gotta do bosses, coin challenges too.

And one final thing, prob one of hardest to do is time challenge. Beat that and you unlock final unlockable character. There’s two unlockable characters in the game.

Imagine that single cartridge of N64 got all of this, this could have been much more if Nintendo purchase Rare. I could never get into Mario Kart because of Diddy Kong Racing. Compared to DKR, Mario Kart on N64 is a joke to me.

I still play N64 from time to time, I love to replay Zelda games, banjo, etc and of course Diddy Kong Racing.

The absolute best arcade racer to me was always NFS Hot Pursuit 2 for PS2. The physics were so much fun and the cars were a curated selection of cool.

Always loved the Project Gotham Racing series, especially 3. Tons of fun to drift in those games. The Kudos system was definitely a unique feature.

Been playing through the Ridge Racer games most recently. Damn these are just fun to play.

Sega Rally Championship will always stand out as some of the best driving physics early on.

Art of Rally and Art of drift are hella fun “zen” games with a unique art style.

I was always a sucker for some of the cash-in Fast and Furious era car fad games. Juiced, Tokyo Extreme Racer (out before all of it) Street Racing Syndicate, NFS Underground, Midnight Club 3. They’re all fun but driving is always just ok.

My short list though: Gran Turismo 4 Forza Motorsport 4 or 6 (4 is less grindy I feel) NFS Most Wanted 2

I have a work-in-progress list here, strictly games I would consider “must play” in the genre. Notably missing the Ridge Racer and Tokyo Xtreme Racer games because I haven’t played enough of them to have an opinion.

https://howlongtobeat.com/user/atmur/lists/40754/Peak-Racing-Games

Mostly arcade and simcade racers though. If you’re interested in sims:

For modding, Assetto Corsa is basically the modern rFactor.

For offline racing, Automobilista and Raceroom have pretty solid AI. Note: Raceroom’s pricing model is dumb, kind of like iRacing just without the subscription.

For career mode, Project CARS 2 (not 3) is basically the only sim that even tries.

For online racing, ACC and iRacing are unmatched.

For rally, you’re already playing DR2. Richard Burns Rally is also shockingly good for its age.

These days I play a lot of Forza Horizon 4 and not much else, since I haven’t found anything else to really click. There’s a couple good ones out there though: Motor Town is pretty good as a car game in general, not just racing. Also BeamNg if you just wanna fuck around with the physics engine. Ooh, and Dakar Desert Rally is a fantastic rally raid simulation (albeit somewhat flawed)

Otherwise I would give some classics a shout: GRID the original, still holds up today. Also NFS Porsche, which was so ahead of its time it’s ridiculous.

Almost forgot: Driver San Francisco is a gem of a game, and Re-Volt, which is bound to get the remaster treatment any day now.

Any Black Box made Need for Speed.

(Currently busy fixing Pro Street, so many bugs…)

I loved Driveclub back on PS4, think it’s delisted and possibly servers shut down, don’t remember.

Project Gotham Racing (I think 2 was my preferred one), Midnight Club II as well

Mario Kart series

Quantum Redshift on OG Xbox

Distance

it’s highly replayable esp because of Steam Workshop modding support, it’s got excellent singleplayer campaigns, fun online multiplayer racing with friends and arcade modes, soundtracks that really gets the blood 🤌P U M P I N G🤌🔥

also works on Linux with no issues✨

Here’s also the 1.3 Electric Boogaloo Update

and 1.5 Kinetic Update🤗

• 4D Sports Driving (1990)
• Hi-Octane (1995)
• NFS: Most Wanted (2005)
• Flatout 2 (2008)
• Vector 36 (2017)
• Forza Horizon 5 (2021)
• BeamNG.drive (ongoing)

I haven’t played a racing game since Need for Speed: Underground 2, and before that Carmageddon which probably doesn’t count. I have, though, seen a Group B Audi Quattro like in the thumbnail. It was in a heritage rally and it sounded FANTASTIC.

Any AG racing fans in here?

BalisticNG is my latest main game, but my love began with the WipEout series.

I also enjoy Redout and Redout 2, but the lack of weapons means I can only go so long before needing to play WipEout or BNG again.

Obligatory mention of !ballisticng@sopuli.xyz