Arcade Driving Games

I recently listed to a Retronauts podcast on arcade racing games, which was great, and you should all listen to Retronauts, but they missed a few games that were interesting to me, so I thought I’d write about them.

Chase HQ (Taito 1988)

I remember Chase HQ fondly, and it seemed to be a really popular game at the time, it would be in every arcade you went to. The beauty of Chase HQ over other games was the fact as well as getting to drive fast you got to chase the bad guys and smash them off the road.

 

Power Drift (Sega 1988)

This is another game that seemed really popular when I was young. It’s really fast paced and fun, with crazy tracks, plus the characters were unique for the time. It could do with a modern version I reckon, something like the treatment that Out Run 2 got, and with online play.

 

Super Monaco GP (Sega 1989)

This game seemed really impressive back in the day, although it doesn’t seem to have aged so well. Still it was fast and challenging, plus the Mega Drive version was great, I wasted many hours on that.

 

OutRunners (Sega 1992)

Like many of the newer driving games this was a great game to play with friends. It captured a lot of the spirit of Out Run but also turned the wackyness up a notch.

 

World Rally Championship (Galeco 1993)

I really like these 2D style racers like this, although they seem to have been forgotten. I recently got the PCB of this and in one way games like this are more playable today that the others in the list as they rely less on the graphics and more on speed and reactions. Mille Miglia is similar, probably even better.

 

Midnight Run (Konami 1996)

This was probably my first exposure to games about Japanese street racing, and in this case it was about the Wangan, or motorway racing. It’s not an amazing game, but I really enjoyed it at the time, and would happily play it again. Winding Heat is like a sister game, but based on Touge, or mountain road racing. One of the best features of both of these games is that they feature traffic, going both ways!

 

GTI Club (Konami 1996)

This is a bonkers game, racing quickly through narrow Monaco streets, finding shortcuts and generally having a lot of fun racing friends. I believe its available on PSN, so its worth checking it out if you have a PS3.

There were loads of other great driving arcade games, this is just a selection, are there any others that you particularly enjoyed?