I rememeber playing those little mechanical arcade racing games which involved a rotating cylinder with a course painted on it, and you controlled a car on a lever which you had to move left and right to follow the course, as well as accelerator and brakes which would slow or speed up tjhe cyclinder's rotation. It would even detect crashes, and score you appropriately.
The first multiplayer racing I ever really got into was the 10 networked Virtua-Racing arcade machines they had at SegaWorld in Bournemouth in the 90s.
The 2 that really "did it for me" would have been Microprose Grand Prix and Hard Drivin'.. both on the Amiga.. although put many hours in on TD2: The Duel too. The former inspired me to buy my first pedals:
The latter was so great to play in the arcade with a clutch and an H-shift box
Lombard RAC Rally on the Amiga also got played a lot:
Celica GT Rally:
Crazy Cars II:
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (first one was by far the best IMO):
PC-wise, LFS was the first really.. followed by rFactor then GTR2. Now it's mainly RACE'07 when I can be arsed to get the wheel out and of course, Generally still gets played
I had those pedals too, along with a really lousy steering wheel that wasnt mounted and used gravity and some kind of marble inside it to determine if you where pressing left or right. It was so aweful I went back to keys !
I started off with Porsche 2000.
Then I played all of the NFS games. And in 2007 I started Simracing.
Bought a new wheel and got DTM Race Driver 3. Had a nice time there. Lots of victories and exciting racing. And now.... LFS.
The story continues...
Started with Accolade Grand Prix Circuit back in school, then in 2000 I got my first PC. NFS3, Sports Car GT, Rally championship 2000, Colin 1&2 then without a wheel I played F1 Championship season 2000, one of the worst F1 games to date, and F1CH98-02. Then a big gap till I bought a new wheel, and LFS came.
I played several other games, but I played the rest just for fun.
Oh I forgot this one from Mastertronic, also a Spectrum game, the keys where setup such that you could build a steering wheel out of a roll of selotape stuck to your keyboard, which after numerous failed attempts, I settled for just using keys.
It was quite original in that it gave you two keys for turning in each direction, which was a revolution in the day !
Not sure if it was that but very similar at least.
Then to the list, it's very hard remember all and they may even not be in correct order but I'll try.
On PC:
Accolade's Grand Prix Circuit (Best menu music ever)
Accolade's The Cycles (Best intro music ever) Stuns (I actually have this on my PC currently, for the nostalgia)
Then was some Formula game, probably Indy 500 or Formula One Grand Prix, can't remember it properly because my dad uninstalled it immediately after first test because it made a horrible big sound from our pc speaker.
These three were the racing games when I was really a little boy and we used to play these with my cousins.
Then the next would maybe be
Need For Speed 3 Hot Pursuit.
Tommi Mäkinen Rally, very much like Network Q RAC Rally, tho the Network Q RAC Rally was better but my cousin owned it so I only played it during visiting there.
If I remember correctly this was when I got my first wheel, some piece of crap AXXO-wheel with PC-Port connector. Racing Simulation: Monaco Grand Prix 2
Colin Mcrae Rally 1
TOCA 2
It is quite shady when I got my first console, but I used to play CMR2 NFS5 and after that I got PS2 and played CMR3 and GT4 and Ford Racing 2 maybe.
Consoles weren't my thing so back to the PC games:
Need For Speed 4 High Stakes
Need For Speed 5 Porsche 2000 / Unleashed
Rally Trophy
Papyrys Nascar 2003
Richard Burns Rally
Then it was time for trying out different ISI game's demos and I first ended up with GTL and then with rF.
Live For Speed was maybe somewhere between RBR and ISI games.
NFS Underground*
NFS Underground 2*
Colin Mcrae Rally 04
NFS Most Wanted*
GT4
NFS Carbon**
LFS
rTractor Demo (But it just crashes every time I try to load the track )
Hmm... First racing game I got was probably GT2. Man, back in the day this game was awesome! Having alot of credits meant I could jump in any cool car, sell it, then try the next.
Also, back then, I was a motorsport fan. I had an old F1 game, ToCA on PS1, plus Rally Masters.
Moving on to different consoles, I had GT3. One word to describe it was BORING. It had ruined most of what I liked about GT2, and it felt a bit hard then. There were barely many interesting cars out there. After that, I got HP2. I started to like Exotic cars more, but not until Underground came out a year after.
UG/UG2 were the games that changed the reason why I like cars. Modding cars to personalize them, making them 1-of a kind cars is what I really wanted to do. So then I got games like Juiced and Midnight Club.
Nowadays that Juiced has died, Midnight Club takes ages to finish, NFS it the only Tuner game left. I'm now moving on to future releases like Supercar Challenge and DiRT 2. Now I'm just waiting for another game maker to create more tuner games! 'Till then I'll look for Modded LFS .vob files.
Little off-topic here, but you make a car "unique" by adding on pre-fabricated aftermarket kit? If everyone has access to it, it's not one-of-a-kind
On the other hand, if you hand craft the parts then it's a different story. But that's not the way it works in games - we can all put those parts on so to truly be unique you need to not attach any of them
I missed out a few games on my list. Stuff like Stunt Race FX and Screamer, which were awesome back in the day. I loved the soundtrack to both Screamer (hair rock) and Screamer 2 (trancey/jungle).
Thankyou for posting that, I was just trying to remember what it was called. I loved that thing.
I had a motorcycle game for Spectrum called "Death Chase" or something but cannot remember playing any other Speccy racing games.
Then it's the usual Amiga games:
Microprose F1
Lotus Turbo Challenge 1,2,3
Lombard Rac Rally
Super Off Road Racing
Skidmarks
Fastlane The Spice Engineering Challenge (link because not sure it has been mentioned unlike others) though it may have been. http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mai ... s/details.php%3Fid%3D2253
The PS1 games
Ridge Racer
V-Rally
Gran Turismo 1 - 2
Colin McRae
Toca Touring Cars - 2 - WTC
POD
Formula One Grand Prix
Formula 1 Racing Simulator (Ubisoft, '98)
Stunts
Street Rods
Lamborghini Challenge
Lotus Challenge
Need for Speed series, except for The Need for Speed
Driver
Colin McRae Rally 1 & 2
Viper Racing
Midtown Madness 1 & 2
Sports Car GT
Network Q RAC Rally Championship (Brilliant! Ahh the memories )
Toca 2
Juiced
Hard Truck 1 & 2
Richard Burns Rally
rTractor
Most Simbin/ISI games
Netkar Namie
Racer
Test Drive Unlimited
LFS
That's about it, as far as PC games go. It's not in chronological order.
DOS era:
Grand Prix Circuit - 1997-2000, 2008
Lotus 2 - 1997-2000
these were the only racing games I played back then along with other great classics like Pacman
Modern era:
Grand Prix 2 - 1999
TOCA 2 Touring Cars - 2000-2004
Colin McRae Rally - 2003-2004
Rally Masters - 2003-2005
Rally Championship (2000) - 2004-2005, 2008
F1 Racing Championship - 2005-2007, 2008
Grand Prix 3 - 2005-2006, 2007-2008
Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed - 2004-2007, 2008
Live For Speed 2002 or 2003 - 2005, 2007-present
Need for Speed Underground - 2003, 2006
F1 Challenge - 2005, 2008-present
That's all I can remember, at least until something more comes out.