User blog:Pseudobread/Guided Tour: Racing Games

Guided Tour CSS

With over 72 million monthly visitors across over 320,000 wikis (and counting!), Wikia is a hotbed of passionate expertise on an incredibly diverse range of topics. With such a plethora of information to sift through, breaking into a new franchise or genre can seem a tad overwhelming. To help break the ice, we're going to be asking experts from various communities to tell us what it is about their area of expertise they find so captivating -- and the steps they recommend beginners take to set themselves on the path to geekery!

We're calling the series "Guided Tour," and our topic this time is the Racing game genre.



Racing games are one of the oldest genres in gaming, arguably debuting in 1973 when Atari released Space Race in arcades. Since then, racing games have become a staple genre, and are frequently used to showcase exceptional graphics, there’s a reason Forza 5 launched with the Xbox One. A lot of games can be classified as racing games, but the genre generally boils down to one simple rule, you win by crossing the finish line in first place or as fast as possible.

Racing games are generally broken up into two camps, arcade and simulation. Arcade racing games are generally designed with player fun in mind, think Mario Kart or Need for Speed, while simulation games are made to reflect a more realistic driving experience, think Gran Turismo or Forza. There are oddball hybrid games like Trials Fusion and car combat games like Twisted Metal, that fall somewhere in-between

As always, we’ve turned to the admins of some of our biggest racing Wikias to see what got them into Racing games, which ones are their favorites, and why they’re still playing them after all these years.

For me, getting into the racing game scene was a simple matter of logic. I became a NASCAR fan at all of two years old, and from there my passion for cars flourished. I'd always been absolutely fascinated with the automobile – its concept, its million different looks, each signifying someone's take on the question of “what is the ultimate in human transportation?” By age 4, I could typically identify every car in a parking lot, and those I couldn't enticed me even further. And by that age I had an interest in gaming, too, so when I got my first console – a PlayStation 1 – in '95, it naturally followed that I'd want a racing game to play on it. So when Gran Turismo, made by a fledgling company called Polyphony Digital, came out in '97, I was more than excited. Here was a game that, more than any other game on the market at the time, embodied not only the thrill and drama of motorsport by simulating to a T the feel of driving some of the world's best cars, but car culture as a whole. While I've played many, many racing games since, the only games to ever best the feel and excitement of Gran Turismo have been its sequels.

The thing about racing games that I find the most amazing is that the genre has two faces, and both are takes on what their creators consider to be the best thing about racing. For racing simulators like GT, Forza Motorsport, rFactor, etc., it's the intense concentration required to drive the car as fast as it can go (and sometimes only as fast as you dare), while monitoring the feel of the steering and the car's movement to keep all those ponies tethered. They explore the depths of realism as much as the technology allows. The thrill and adrenaline of taking a high­-powered, beastly machine along a ridiculously technical course at maximum speed while the rear end is bumping and sliding around at every possible opportunity is unreal. And doing all this while trying to maneuver around the other cars on the track can, at times, be pure nightmare fuel.

On the other hand, you've got arcade racers, which minimize the amount of realism in order to focus more on the racing aspect; some good ones in the genre include games such as Daytona USA 2, TrackMania, and Need for Speed. While I generally prefer simulators, I do play arcade racers quite a lot. It's hard not to like a game that allows you to take a massively powerful Pagani Zonda and slide it around a hairpin at 100­-odd MPH, then nitro out of it into oncoming traffic, when, in a simulation game, the dang thing would try to kill you if you even thought about touching the gas pedal. The races are usually at least as absurd as the typical FPS mission as well, with insane jumps and ludicrous shortcuts that often have you doing such things as jumping over the competition. And that's not even counting kart racers, with their hilarious weapons - almost nothing beats dropping a banana or an oil slick with the rest of the field behind you and looking back onto the carnage that ensues.

That's what I like about racing games most – that duplicity. Racing simulators force you to concentrate, using physics to narrow the uncanny valley and get the blood pumping. They also share a deep love and respect of car culture, which allows them to also function as interactive automotive encyclopedias. Arcade racers are there to put a smile on your face, and sometimes to make you laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. Either way, the racing game genre is one of the few where it can be honestly said that there's something in it for everyone.

Want to learn more about Racing games? All of our experts provided a number of links to help you dip your toes into their exciting, ever-changing world. They also recommend you reach out to them via their message wall, wiki chat, or talk page if you have any questions. Here's the syllabus:


 * http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Racing
 * http://nfs.wikia.com/wiki/Need_for_Speed_Wiki
 * http://gran-turismo.wikia.com/wiki/Gran_Turismo_Wiki
 * http://forzamotorsport.wikia.com/wiki/Forza_Motorsport_Wiki
 * http://mariokart.wikia.com/wiki/Mario_Kart_Racing_Wiki:Main_Menu
 * http://dirt.wikia.com/wiki/Colin_McRae_Rally_and_DiRT_Wiki
 * http://grid2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
 * http://f1.wikia.com/wiki/The_Formula_1_Wiki
 * http://drive-club.wikia.com/wiki/Drive_Club_Wiki
 * http://thecrew.wikia.com/wiki/THE_CREW_Wiki
 * http://simracing.wikia.com/wiki/Sim_Racing_Wiki

Got any questions about Racing Games or a favorite Racing Game to recommend? Leave a comment below!