My pick: Either Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005) or Forza Horizon 1.
Edit: jeez some of you are old AF lol
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.
Need for Speed Underground for pretty cars, and Burnout for fun chaos.
Am I the only one that doesn’t care for the underground atheist? The games were great, but I didn’t care for racing in econobox cars with the riced out accessories. I missed all the super cars and stuff.
Wow, okay.
I’m partial to the idea of a heavily modified cheap car that keeps up with the high dollar cars. Built not bought and all that.
I think it was Need for Speed 3 Hot Pursuit 2 that had all the super cars to choose from.
Well I mean like the classic need for speeds were right down my alley. I liked getting to race with Vipers, Porsches, Ferraris, etc. Those were always the dream cars to me as an 80s kid.
Underground was great to play, and I did enjoy them, but for me it came out at a time when I was starting to buy my own car. Racing a cheap car like the ones I could afford at the time just didn’t appeal to me. Civics, Tiburóns, Cobalts etc. were all kinda lame. I wanted the cool , unattainable cars that we had posters of as kids. Also the whole “fast and the furious” culture around it didn’t appeal to me.
I am partial to the classy NFSs, myself, but the two UGs are very good games.
Quietly, the best NFS is Hot Pursuit, and it really doesn’t matter which one of them you pick.
rayman arena
I gotta go with the old Gran Turismo 2. Absolute classic in it’s day
Split/second. You could blow up huge chunks of the track, which than changed the route. You could blow up and airport. And it was made by disney, of all studios. Better action than Burnout imho.
F zero x N64 is the one I had the most fun with
Live For Speed
Still love it, now with mods :)
Top Gear 3000, for SNES. Honorable mentions to Mario Kart Wii (because steering the controller to steer the car will never not be fun) and Horizon Chase Turbo (which is pretty much a modern Top Gear game).
Midtown Madness 3 with a friend on the couch.
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.
Excite Truck
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.
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. 🛻💨
Stunt Car Racer on the Amiga.
Outrun, for the music
