5.) Hot Rod: American Street Drag
Platform: PC
I picked this up for five bucks at Staples one night. Basically the idea is you start off in a junkyard with 5 grand and have to build a car that can get featured on the cover of Hot Rod. Its selection of cars (both new and old muscle) and nearly endless customization (shown below) are awesome. The game also has a neat in game clock. You only have 3 hours per weeknight and ten hours per day on weekends to work on your car, and every job takes so many hours to do, so you literally spend in game years building your baby. This may sound bad, but its insanely realistic and very cool. The realism of the cars isn't have bad either, and if you know how to tuned you can build utter beasts (I had a '70 Cuda that ran 7.90s!).
The bad is that the game only featured drag racing, no biggie really. It also had a "life meter" for parts which went by way too quick. Every run "hurt" your parts (regardless of what they were) and after so long they would break. This meant you were constantly grinding races to get cash to fix shit. Yawn. Also the car rating system was wayyyy to detailed. You got points for your bloody radio (and you had to have one installed or you couldn't race!) The game also got repetitive, but if you ever see it for sale, pick it up, for 5 bucks its fun as hell.
4.) Star Wars Episode 1: Racer
Platform: Nintendo 64
Here's an idea: let's take one scene from one movie and make an entire video game out of it! True George Lucas money-grabbing at its finest. Problem is, it was an awesome game. Based off the opening pod racing scene of Episode 1, you picked one of a series of aliens all with insane pods, won races, spent credits to buy pit droids and parts and raced all over the universe at speeds approaching 1000mph. The sense of speed was definitely there, and the customization and set-up were intense. Also, anyone who has ever played it will never forget the two-headed announcer shouting "IT'S A NEW LAP RECORD!!!" that got me so hyped up, I crashed so many times trying to get that sum bitch to say that.
But it wasn't all epic speed and awesome announcing. The game was flat out hard, brutally so. The last dozen or so races were basically impossible, and the reason being the tracks got longer and longer (some flirted with 8+ minutes a lap!) and no matter how much you sunk into your pod, you were always unlocking new opponents with better pods, so you had to constantly upgrade. The game was also way too long, I never finished it in fact. But for flat out arcade racing, few games are better.
3.) Streets of SimCity
Platform: PC
What happens when Twisted Metal and Need for Speed have a bastard child? You get Streets of SimCity. A game with no real purpose, it featured car violence missions, delivery missions, and straight up races. In addition to engine and handling upgrades, you could add armour and rocket launchers, so if you can't drive past an opponent, just blast'em out of the sky. The game also allowed you to import your custom cities from SimCity 2000 and drive around in them, which was stupid fun.
Problem was the game was short, horribly so. And the missions were repetitive, so there was little replay value. Importing cities helped some, but you couldn't do much in them, other than terrorize your populace. And the graphics were awful, even for 15 years ago, as can clearly be seen above. And the game was buggy, crashing once a day at least. Still any game that lets you by the Back to the Future hover conversion, deserves a place on this list.
2.) Combat Cars
Platform Sega Genesis
This game should be number 1 really, but its too unrealistic. Think "Death Race 3000" and you have the idea. Combat Cars let you pilot one of eight cars all with different drivers (ranging from a 900 year old alien named Andrew, to a Mama Cass rip-off, complete with tasteless ham sandwich joke in the instruction manual) all with weapons ranging from missiles to land-mines. The was fast and simple, no tuning, no upgrades, just go race, beating the hell out of anyone in your way. It was also the most addictive game I can ever remember (simple pleasures I suppose).
Trouble was the game, like Streets of SimCity, was much too short. And it was horribly balanced. Andrew's heat seeking missiles destroyed all, whereas guys like Ray only had a nitrous boost. How is that a weapon? Beating the game with certain characters is basically impossible. But for insane action, and hilarious storylines, you can't beat Combat Cars.
1.) R: Racing Evolution
Platform: Nintendo Gamecube, XBox, Playstation 2
The greatest racing game you've never played, is without question R: Racing Evolution. The game featured a ton of fully-licensed raced cars ranging from the Audi R8R and Bentley EXP Speed 8 to the Corvette C5-R and Ford Focus RS. It also featured circuit, rallye (with co-drivers), time trial, historic, and drag races. And had prototype, GT, and rallye classes of cars (amongst others). You could also race bosses for pinks. However, its most innovative feature was the "pressure meter". Every opponent had a bar above his/her head that filled up as you applied pressure. After it filled, the driver would make a mistake, giving you a chance to pass, or causing a wreck for you to avoid. Lower level drivers had small bars, while bosses had massive ones that took several laps to fill. No other racing game ever has had this. The AI was also brilliant, serving down the straights to break up their slipstream, and applying the chrome horn when needed.
It wasn't all good, however. To unlock all the cars took massive amounts of grinding, and the games storyline, featuring two ladies racing with nothing on under their firesuits (and them unzipped to reveal that fact) was pointless and silly. The games drag racing was a joke too. Four-wide racing a half-mile uphill! WTF? And with a good launch you could get out in front and serve and block the other three cars, not cool. And while the game had great tuning options, only four upgrades per car were available. and only on roughly 80% of the cars! Still for how deep, realistic, and varied it was, nothing beat R: Racing Evolution.
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