Racing Game



A subcategory of Sports Games. You are on a course or given a course to take and your goal is to get from point A to point B as fast as you can, usually before your opponents do. Sometimes you're just the car, and you never even see the driver, sometimes you drive nothing at all.

Most racing games are Driving Games and all sit somewhere on a line between "arcade" and "simulation". Toward the arcade end Every Car Is Rear Wheel Drive and brakes are nearly unnecessary; toward the simulation end, games like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, where brakes are the only thing saving you from skidding head-on into the wall and cars are as close as can be made to their Real Life analogues. The most popular racing games are the ones that blend arcade style with real-life cars and locations, or ones that feature an already-popular franchise. Stricter driving sims are more the preserve of the PC market, where there are large online racing and modding groups.

Simulation-style racing games are generally "no contact" affairs, just as in real life. Most NASCAR and Formula One games involve driving around a track with set rules of noninterference with your competitors. Most arcade racers are "full contact" racing, where you can bump and shove your opponents into barriers or just simply spin them out.

If the game has real cars in it, the names and likenesses are licensed from the manufacturer(s). Generally, the terms of the license require that the cars be invulnerable, as auto manufacturers don't want people to think their cars get damaged easily. This just happens to promote the idea that dangerous driving has no consequences, but hey, at least our car looks good.

Of course, the car drivers themselves are even less vulnerable and you rarely see them die in a car crash. Even in games where you are not driving cars, they usually still fall neatly into arcade or sim, though the further they go towards simulation in this case, the less they will play like a driving game.

An inordinate number of racing games feature a Cheating Bastard. See also, Racing Mini Game


 * Insane
 * Four Times Four Evolution
 * Battle Cars
 * Battle Gear
 * Beetle Adventure Racing
 * Big Rigs Over the Road Racing
 * Blur
 * Burnout
 * Cars Race-O-Rama
 * Choro Q - licensed from a brand of toy cars in Japan.
 * Colin McRae Rally
 * DiRT (video game)
 * Crashday
 * Crash Team Racing, Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Tag Team Racing (spinoffs of Crash Bandicoot)
 * Cruisn
 * Daytona USA
 * Death Rally
 * Diddy Kong Racing
 * Driving Emotion Type S ( Square Enix's attempt at making a Gran Turismo killer)
 * F-Zero
 * FAST Racing League
 * Fatal Racing (known in the US as "Whiplash")
 * Flat Out
 * Forza Motorsport
 * FUEL
 * Gran Trak 10
 * Gran Turismo
 * G Surfers
 * Grand Prix Legends
 * GT Legends
 * Indy Car Racing II
 * Initial D Arcade Stage
 * Konami Krazy Racers
 * LEGO Racers
 * Live For Speed
 * Mario Kart
 * Super Mario Kart
 * Mario Kart 64
 * Mega Man Battle And Chase (a spinoff of Mega Man, natch)
 * Megarace
 * Micro Machines
 * Midnight Club
 * Midtown Madness
 * Modnation Racers
 * Motorstorm
 * Need for Madness
 * Need for Speed
 * Nitronic Rush
 * Pole Position
 * Quantum Redshift
 * Racer Free Car Simulation
 * Racing Lagoon (A Square Enix hybrid of a RPG and street racing sim, basically their answer to Tokyo Xtreme Racer)
 * Rad Racer
 * Rally Trophy
 * RC Pro Am
 * Re-Volt
 * R Factor
 * Ridge Racer
 * Richard Burns Rally
 * Road Fighter
 * Rock n' Roll Racing
 * Rollcage
 * San Francisco Rush
 * Sega Rally
 * Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing
 * Sonic R
 * Split Second
 * Super Sprint
 * SuperTuxKart
 * Test Drive
 * TOCA Race Driver
 * * GRID
 * Tokyo Xtreme Racer
 * Top Gear
 * Track Mania
 * V-Rally
 * Viper Racing
 * Virtua Racing
 * Wacky Wheels
 * Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune
 * Wipeout
 * WRC


 * 1080 Snowboarding
 * Banjo-Kazooie Pilot
 * Chocobo Racing (a spinoff of Final Fantasy)
 * Donkey Kong Barrel Blast
 * Excite
 * Extreme-G
 * Freaky Fliers
 * Heracles Chariot Racing
 * Hydro Thunder
 * Hydro Thunder Hurricane
 * H 2 Overdrive
 * Joe Danger
 * Kirby's Air Ride
 * Light Trax
 * Monster Racers
 * Mountain Bike Rally
 * MX vs. ATV Unleashed
 * Pokémon Dash
 * Running Wild
 * Snowboard Kids
 * Sonic R
 * Sonic Riders
 * Sonic Rivals Duology
 * SSX
 * Track and Field
 * Uniracers
 * Wave Race