I like the Road Rash games on Genesis a lot.
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Road Rash and Skitchin are great. The Ayrton Senna games too, but I played those on Master System.
Network Q RAC Rally Championship on DOS is as good as it gets. Not the sequel International Rally Championship, which is far worse.
POD on Windows 9x. It has not held up and doesn’t look so good no matter how you get it working now. But if you played it back then those memories will live inside you forever.
Badlands on Commodore 64.
Moto Roader 2 on PC Engine.
NFS Porsche Unleashed/2000 (whatever they called it in your region) is the best NFS game.
Love road rash!!
Have you tried Old School Rally?
It’s on my wish list.
Along with some of the other throwback racers/rally games recently, I wish some dev who idolised Rally Championship was giving them a go. They all seem to want to target Sega Rally with a bit of Colin McRae sprinkled in. Which is still good, I love rally wherever I can get it.
Probably F-Zero GX. Though I’m older than that, I wasn’t playing racing games a lot before that. An older game I’d enjoyed a bit was POD (: Planet Of Death).
I’ve played Mario Kart quite a bit, starting back with super, but I can’t really pick one as my favorite retro racing game, because the one I like the most is 8. Though Wii came close.
It’s so satisfying when you get good at knocking out other racers. I remember as a teenager I would set my top speed to high and whittle down half of the other racers on my way to the front of the pack.
It’s easy to get in the top ten when you drop the racers count down fifteen places.
Hell yeah. And then you’ve got one of those crazy hard story mode challenges where you pretty much have to destroy as many opponents you can to have enough juice to win. The one with Michael Chain and his gang.
That story mode was unhinged difficult. Don’t think I got much further than that.
It was such a cool level. I remember that was the only story level I beat in first couple tries~
I did some of it, enough to unlock a few of the AX characters and some machine pieces, but yes, incredibly hard.
Among the unlocks, Daigoroh was cool. Ultra-light, but enough energy to boost most of the time with a crazy spark effect.
You know, when I read retro racing I immediately thought of NFS and Pod, it’s surprising to find someone who still remembers it.
Hydro Thunder on Dreamcast!
The announcer shouting Hydro Thunder is so iconic
The arcade version also has him yelling, “Press your boost button to start!” One of the first x86-based arcade games I can think of.
Stunts was the best. You could draw your own circuits.
Yes!! This and Fatal Racing was my entire early teens!
Rock and Roll Racing
Excite bike
Excite bike
We had endless hours of fun back in the day using the track builder and figuring out the exact spacing and combination of ramps to make your little dude crash out in a manner that flung his tumbling corpse the absolute maximum amount of distance. (Okay, so you never really die in Excitebike, but you know.) You can achieve significant hang time if you do it right.
Random unsolicited video game trivia: First run editions of Excitebike were actually Japanese Famicom cartridges bodged into Famicom-to-NES cartridge converters. They’re literally Japanese copies of the game, verbatim. This includes the theoretical ability to save out your track to the Famicom Data Recorder, which has only the minor wrinkle of never having been released in the US. This was baffling to us at the time, not understanding why the option was there when it self-evidently didn’t work (but your Zelda cartridge could save just fine).
Somehow my dad figured this out using the early Internet or Usenet or something, and then I had the actual answer. Still not actually being able to save, mind you, but at least I knew why you couldn’t. Except nobody in the schoolyard would believe me.
(I do know!)
Rock & Roll Racing is top tier.
excite bike always reminds me of visiting my grandma in daytona beach :)
That’s kid icarus and al uncer jrs racing for me.
I remember my grandmother playing those games with us and she was exactly the person who would gesture with her hands as she was trying to play the game. When the character turned or jumped, her hands would do the same thing, she fling the controller out of her hands at least once that i remember trying to jump to a new platform in kids Icarus
Honorable mentions
Micro machines (that pool level!)
Cobra Triangle
I was going to say SNES Mario Kart, but really I think it’s GC Mario Kart: Double Dash.
Not sure it’s my favourite, but Wipeout XL/2097 deserves a mention.
- Single player: Stunt Car Racer on the Amiga
- Multiplayer: Super Skidmarks also on the Amiga
Stunt Car Racer can have two players on two Amigas with a serial cable connecting them.
I think it’s cross platform too, to Atari and DOS
Now I’m jealous! Back when I was a kid, I loved it on C64 and pressed every single button to find some secret two player mode.
try XJ220 on the Amiga for sense of speed
Road Rash is still one of my favorites! I plan to play through the PSX version at some point since I only ever got the chance to play the Genesis ones as a kid.
F-Zero X
I crave speed and murder
wipeOut
If Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed has become retro then it’s that lol.
Yes! another vote for Wacky Wheels
Rc Pro Am was pretty great.
Rollcage
Re-Volt
Star Wars EP 1: Racer
NFS
NFS2
NFS Hot Pursuit
NFS Underground
Death Rally
Crash Team Racing
Hydro Thunder
SSX Tricky
San Francisco Rush 2049
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
