Unleash the Ultimate Speed: Top Racing Video Games of All Time

Racing video games have a long history that goes back to the very first video games. Racing games are frequently at the forefront of technology advancements, fast to take advantage of every performance boost offered by any particular platform.

There have been countless high-caliber racing games with virtually every kind of vehicle you can attach an engine to and steer in the direction of a finish line created throughout the years, from the top down to takedowns and Byron Bay to Colin McRae. But from our list of favorites, we’ve selected what we think are the best racing games ever made.

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  Burnout 3: Takedown

The wildly popular and completely timeless Burnout 3: Takedown is the pinnacle of high-octane, no-holds-barred arcade racing, and it’s still as enjoyable and savage to play as it was back in 2004.

This is the height of burnout. The lavish and silky-smooth visuals marked a substantial improvement over Burnout 2’s already attractive appearance. The fast-paced pop-punk soundtrack is a throwback to the early 2000s, the racing is pure and accurate, and Crash Mode is excellent. The audio may seem a little dated because of DJ Stryker’s light babble, but everywhere else it is flawless. Just pay attention to the simple gear shift’s satisfyingly mechanical clang; it sounds like Robocop swallowing a nail gun. The Road Rage mode, though, where the titular takedowns are crucial, is where this arcade racing gem truly shines. The impact of the collisions in Burnout 3 has been imitated by many. Few have been successful.

• Forza Horizon 3

The Forza Horizon games represent the pinnacle of contemporary open-world racing. They are without a doubt the mainstream racers to beat; each of them is among the most highly regarded racing games of the contemporary period.

The simply outstanding Forza Horizon 3 is what we find ourselves remembering with the most fondness, even though Forza Horizon 4 continues to be a remarkable addition to the series thanks to its changing seasons and incredible post-launch support (well over 100 new cars have been added to the game over the past two years for free).

Forza Horizon is a series that draws inspiration from a variety of other ones, including the Midnight Club and Midtown Madness open-world wackiness, the joy of limitless cruising found in Test Drive: Unlimited, and the encouragement of imaginative driving found in Bizarre’s wonderful but now-defunct Project Gotham Racing series. But what has really made the Horizon series a smashing success is this potent concoction of chemicals.

• Daytona USA

Daytona USA, possibly the most recognizable arcade racing game ever and the highest-grossing sit-down cabinet ever, is still a shining example of arcade racing at its purest, from the joy of judo-chopping the invariably greasy gear knob from fourth to first to send the #41 Hornet into a killer drifts to the gleeful and inexorably contagious theme song written and sung by the irrepressible Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. Additionally, it supported up to eight players, which frequently turned this arcade king into a hive of continual competition.

When Daytona USA first appeared in arcades in 1993 or 1994, it competed against Namco’s similarly avant-garde Ridge Racer. Ridge Racer ultimately had a stronger home release conversion (and being on the phenomenally successful PlayStation didn’t hurt its chances), but Daytona USA has to come out on top in any ranking of arcade racing greats.

• Driver: San Francisco

Undoubtedly one of the most underrated and distinctive driving/racing games ever created, Driver: San Francisco is also one of the strongest. Though it initially seems like a ridiculous deviation from the established plot of the Driver series to put the main character in a coma and have the majority of the action take place in a dream state where he has the power to possess any other driver on the road, it turns out to be a tonne of fun.

Although the idea of Driver: San Francisco is absurd, Ubisoft Reflections embraces it with such enthusiasm and sincerity that the game never becomes completely ridiculous. Some of the most recognizable automobile chase stars of all time may be found among the assortment of officially licensed vehicles, and the game contains secret references to those legendary film sequences. Additionally, the painstakingly crafted musical fusion of funk, rock, and soul is the ideal background music for relentless pursuits and pedal-stomping powerslides.

• Street Rod

The summer of 1963 serves as the backdrop for Street Rod, marking the end of the hot rod period and the beginning of the advent of the muscle vehicle, which made it easier than ever to buy a powerful, street-legal drag racer off the lot.

Buying new parts and experimenting with the engine are essential components of growth in the street rod genre, which places a strong emphasis on building, not buying. There isn’t much of a plot in this game; players only have 12 weeks of summer to construct a vehicle that can defeat The King in his black ’63 Corvette. But he won’t race just any random loser in some 20-year-old junker with a brand-new carburetor, and even if he did, you wouldn’t beat him; instead, you must compete against and defeat a slew of other neighborhood car enthusiasts at the burger joint in order to amass enough money to assemble a street vehicle that can rule the city.

• Road Rash

Since 1991, Road Rash has been available on a variety of platforms, but the later CD versions are what gave us the most gravel rash. The licensed soundtrack arms race in video games is often credited to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but the CD versions of Road Rash, which debuted on the 3DO in 1994, were beating the drum years before the Birdman.

• TOCA Race Driver

Anyhow, Race Driver 3 has a tonne of official championships, from sprint cars to Formula 3, GT racing to monster trucks, as well as the DTM, V8 Supercars, and IndyCar from the US. Race Driver 3 has so much to offer that you could spend your entire morning driving a V8 Supercar up Mount Panorama and your entire afternoon controlling a huge supertruck around Oran Park and still haven’t even touched the surface. If you had your way, you wouldn’t have even traveled to Australia, much less the state. For gamers with the endurance to unlock it, there was a real-life motorsports world waiting for them.

• Need for Speed: Most Wanted

There’s no getting around the reality that no other racing franchise this side of Mario Kart comes close to equaling the phenomenal popularity of NFS over the past 25 years, despite the fact that some racing purists may consider EA’s long-running Need for Speed series to be mainstream nonsense. And while it’s true that there have been a few duds along the way, the NFS series has a tonne of genuinely excellent entries. It’s clearly a photo finish, but Need for Speed: Most Wanted from 2005 wins this round because it consistently manages to hold its own as the standard by which most other Need for Speed games are measured.

• WipEout 2097

When hoverboards first became popular, you couldn’t enter a store selling video games without accidentally knocking over a stack of futuristic racing games. Rollcage, Motorhead, Extreme-G, Jet Moto, Star Wars Episode I: Racer, and many others. Sadly, it seems like there are fewer futuristic racing games as we get deeper into the future.

But there is one series in particular that lingers just above the rest: WipEout. The first WipEout was a launch game for the PlayStation in Europe, created by the illustrious Liverpudlian studio Psygnosis. Players had never experienced anything like it before a brutal, high-speed rollercoaster of a racing game for the rave generation. But this anti-gravity superstar really found its footing with WipEout 2097 (also known as WipEout XL in Japan and North America).

•  Test Drive: Unlimited

While other races concentrate on quick bursts of excitement, TDU was at its best during its time-consuming car delivery missions and its spectacular entire island events, like The Millionaire’s Challenge, which requires competitors to complete a full lap of Oahu in 60 minutes.

TDU first appeared at the start of the Xbox 360 era, but its subdued and occasionally hazy appearance was eventually overshadowed by its glossy spiritual successor Forza Horizon, which debuted at the end of the generation. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that Playground Games’ open world opus was standing on Eden’s earlier masterpiece.