My pick: Either Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005) or Forza Horizon 1.
Edit: jeez some of you are old AF lol
Burnout 3 : Takedown
Yeah boi! Nothing beats those crash junctions.
The fact no one has recreated this game mode in modern times boggles the mind.
Need for Speed: Underground 2
This game informed a lot of my early musical tastes and probably contributed to my current tastes in one way or another.
Mario Kart
But which one???
My gut says 64, but 8 is pretty frig’n awesome
Sounds exactly like what I would say. I think it’s safe to say 8 is objectively better.
For racing: Double Dash
For battle: 64
That could probably be its own post, people have pretty strong opinions on that haha.
Me personally I’ve always been partial to Mario Kart 64 (& I know lots of people hate on it). It has just the right balance of speed and driving mechanics that make it a good racing game. Later on remember playing the follow-up on the Gamecube (Mario Kart Double Dash) & I never really liked that one, it just feels kind of slow/sluggish compared to 64. Like it’s trying to be a racing game but it just runs too slow IMO.
People hate on MK 64??? Who are these philistines???
Double Dash
Diddy Kong Racing, even though Pipsy and Tiptup were inherently OP.
100% this, Crash Team Racing is a close 2nd place for me.
Trackmania™
It’s the perfect mix of low skill for and outrageously high skill ceiling
I gotta go with the old Gran Turismo 2. Absolute classic in it’s day
IIRC, there was a bug in the race car (F1? Indy?) where if you max out the speed, it would get stuck at that speed no matter what. Then you could take it off any ramp and jump most of the way across the map. Just messing around with the map editor and that car wasted so many weekends for me.
The time I spent playing stunts on that old dos machine 😍
Similarly, Deathtrack was also pretty awesome. I’d say stunts was a bit better though. Spent a lot of time making my own tracks.
I still play a lot of need for speed underground on my ps2.
I’ll also always love Carmageddon 2. So much fun and a soundtrack full of Iron Maiden!
Star Wars Racer using two N64 controllers.
I’ll throw my hat in for Re-Volt or however it’s spelt.
There was a post the other day about yet another remake of our fire the steam platform (search for RVGL maybe); I haven’t looked into that but back in the day of Voodoo graphics it was so friggin’ fun to play, but single player and 8-player LAN.
It’s gonna be hard to pick, because despite seeming like a pretty shallow genre, there are some pretty wild differences in gameplay. Arcade, Simcade, and Simulator all rely on different populations. People who enjoy Horizon are probably not lining up to play iRacing, and vice-versa.
In my opinion, I’d say one of the early Gran Turismo games, specifically 2 through 4. It was many people’s introduction to racing games and, at the time, was pretty cutting edge. That’s now changed with the Sim games, but there are plenty of Sim offerings now and it isn’t necessarily anything “groundbreaking” being released anymore.
I’m hesitant to agree with Horizon because I personally don’t enjoy it at all, but I understand the appeal of the first one, especially in a time where that concept was fairly new.
NFS:U2 Is also up there, due to the era. That was the epitome of late 90s/early 2000s car culture and had a large impact on the scene at the time, and just was a benchmark for the arcade side of stuff for a long time.
Horizon 1 was most wanted, legalized. Plus the best soundtrack of all time.
Idk, NFS:U2 also had a good ass sound track lol. But yeah, just by virtue of the setting, Horizon has always had some good sound tracks. H4 got old real quick tho…
ACC or Assetto Corsa
Burnout 2 or 3. Because the object is to either crash or cause crashes.
the soundtrack was killer too.
I think it is a tie between iRacing and Assetto Corsa, tho I personally preferred AC for the graphics and cost.
As for silly fun, Super Off Road on SNES. I could spend hours playing that as a kid. 🛻💨
Outrun, for the music
