Racing Games Through the Years

[Bozak]

Sportscar GT (1999) isiMotor1
All four GP games from Geoff Crammond and the above gave me endless hours of fun, I still play GP4

 

[mokkun]

My dad was an aficionado about racing games in the old times, so I got to play many of the games since I was 5 years old (90's).

From that list I've played:
- 1982 Pole Position (Atari)
- 1986 Sega Out Run (Master System)
- 1989 Indianapolis 500 The Simulation (PC)
- 1993 IndyCar Racing (PC)
- 1996 Daytona USA (Arcade and PC)
- 1996 IndyCar Racing II (PC)
- lots of other titles...

Not in the list but mentioned by some people, I loved playing the Geoff Crammond Grand Prix series:
- 1992 Formula One Grand Prix (PC)
- 1996 Grand Prix 2 (PC)
- 2000 Grand Prix 3 (PC)
- 2002 Grand Prix 4 (PC)

Not mentioned, but it was quite fun to play:
- 1989 Battle Out Run (Master System)

- 1990 Stunts (PC)

- 1992 Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge (PC)

There's more, but I can't remember now.

 

[Rodent]

And let's not forget:

And because... Outrun!

Off to work but now I'll be stuck in the 80's all day... AGAIN.

 

[Vincent.C]

Hi, I'm younger... what about my first racing game: MICROSOFT CART Precision Racing (97)?

 

[Jim Liak]

Grand Prix Legends looked unreal at 1998. Impressive stuff.
Same with Mobil 1 Rally Championship at 2000.

PS: GTR 3 is a speculation for 2018.

 

[Rob]

My first racing game was, well, of a different sort....(1980)

 

[Roderick Kennedy]

Fun fact real, did you know that Mablethorpe is my local seaside town and it's not up north, it's in Lincolnshire and it floods a lot. Yes the arcade is a bit retro there. But there is a chippy to die for.

Had my honeymoon on a shoestring in Mablethorpe,been back 5/6 times since too,not grim at all.

 

[Graham Botha]

No mention of the original Test Drive and Grand Prix by ACCOLADE? Those were some of the first greats on the PC platform...

 

[Alex72]

Yeah what memories! Did all of those except GPL... I think i was doing something completely different at that time. But picked it up from Colin McRae again. And original Test Drive... That song and the show of the cars with stats. Felt real back then lol. Out Run in the arcades at first and then we got it in our homes. Magical times, guys. Even though everything is so much more complex and looks more real today it still felt amazingly real back then with blocky pixelated graphics and 10FPS.

 

[kedy89]

Oh the memories, I think this one was one of the first I played, at a friend's place.

Countless own followed, on PC, PS1, PS2, ...
Found them all so realistic back then, little did I know what would come in the future. Geoff Crammond's GP3 and GP4 impressed me most at that time, the latter I still play regularly. Guess I'll always love that one

 

[mokkun]

No mention of the original Test Drive and Grand Prix by ACCOLADE? Those were some of the first greats on the PC platform...

Oh yeah, totally forgot about Accolade's Gran Prix, another great classic, well remembered.

 

[VirtuaIceMan]

I had this too (somewhere)

Superleague Formula by ISI!!

Is there any way to get this to work any more? The unlock feature is long gone.

 

[VirtuaIceMan]

Oh the memories, I think this one was one of the first I played, at a friend's place.

Did you know that the engine for this game originated in Power F1 by Eidos? Or that it was used in many games later like GP Championship 2, Grand Prix Simulator and the Castrol Honda Superbike games, as well as GP vs Superbike (a silly combo version of the two sports)?

 

[Graham Botha]

There is also F1 by Psygnosis that had Murray Walker doing the voice over

 

[PicoBp]

One of my firsts
Weather effects, day-night transition, working headlights, multi-class racing...

 

[Jack Vos]

Since playing Pole position in a Arcade Hal and later on having the game for myself on the Commodore 64 i am hooked to computer racing

F1GP on the Amiga was my nr 1 game were with Olivier Roberts his editor it was possible to have other skins on the cars
Rene Smit (creator of GPxPatch for GP4) made back then some great lap timing programs to run with F1GP

I got later on my first PC were you had to buy a extra 3D monster card to have 3D graphics in Colin McCrea Rally lol

 

[DaVeX↯]

Is there any way to get this to work any more? The unlock feature is long gone.

I don't play it since 2011 so I don't know how it works now, I hope to find the box so I can check.

 

[Andy_J]

F1 Championship Edition by Sony.
My eldest son purchased a Sony ps3 in 2007 I think and this came with it. I remember telling him to go and do his homework so I could play it. We still have it. I now play this on an Optoma 1080P HD projector via the PS3 onto a 120" widescreen in our living room (mainly used for watching bluray movies).
It is still a brilliant F1 simulation with great sounds and even better replays. Love it. Great damage and crash scene at 0:40 seconds in.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Played a lot of the titles in the original list except for some of the older PC titles. I've played the more recent PC titles such as rF1 and GTRs which actually got me into PC gaming in the first place

It was all arcade games for me at the beginning with the odd pole position round a friends house. Also played Geoff Grammond GP but not sure which one. I was in my late teens early twenties when we used to play it at work on the Reuters machine... the traders would all finish for the day and load up Doom... those were the days.

TOCA was am amazing series of games and absolutely couldn't put them down. F1 97 seemed to be a cult thing among all people I knew, not only racing fans but just people with a Playstation too.

Sega Rally at the arcades and then on the Sega Saturn was immense. Daytona too but what followed in the arcade was the brutally realistic F355 challenge in the massive arcade machine with clutch and H-pattern gearbox. When that came to Dreamcast I was in heaven, especially when it was also sort of online. You'd race and then see how you did in the replays iirc.
Magic

It all seemed so much more awe-inspiring and real back then but when you actually boot them up in an emulator on PC you suddenly realise that the reason they seemed so real is that your brain was making up for the shortcomings and injected a heavy dose of imagination.
These days I think we've become lazy with imagination as things are becoming to look and feel much more realistic and we're not letting the imagination get involved at all. Lol.

Still. I was all console back in the day especially with Project Gotham Racing, online with a gaming community I used to frequent meant it was fair racing with plenty of banter.
GT on PlayStation and Forza on Xbox and it seemed it couldn't get much better.

Happened on a cheap copy of rF1 2008 edition. Was drawn to it by the BMW F1 car on the front cover. I had a pretty basic PC and gave it a go and was amazed. Built a slightly better one and then tried Race 07 and the GTR games before realising I needed more power from the system and of course by this time the G25 I had on PS3 for GT became solely for us on my newly found PC racing sims.
It just keeps getting better and better and I can't wait for what's in store for us in the future, (read: GTR3), but it's always good to remember and treasure your roots.

 

[Ernie]

I really loved ...
1998 - Viper Racing
(Developer: Monster Games)

IMHO the physics and the handling with a FFB wheel was great. It was the first time i saw such a detailed damage model, and also the animated suspension movement was fantastic.