UPDATED 9/27/16: The visual evolution of racing games is varied, with many off-shoots and constant improvements. Since this article first appeared, we've added two more entries to the list.
Today's beautifully rendered racing games, with their licensed cars and amazing attention to detail, are a continuation of one of gaming's oldest genres. Back in 1974, Taito's Speed Race featured black and white graphics of a blocky on a vertically scrolling road. Interest in the genre meant racing games were able to evolve with gaming since the very beginning, with breakthroughs coming with each console generation.
As was the case for most games, the best graphics could be found in the arcades. Sit-down multiplayer cabinets and gearshifts, steering wheels, and pedals added further to the realism. However, as the price of advanced hardware fell, so did interest in arcades. Eventually the home console experience would reach parity with the arcade experience. While capturing the "feel" of driving is something that was best done in an arcade cabinet designed to simulate a car seat, today's racing games easily match the graphical fidelity once only found in the most advanced and expensive arcade games.
Click on the right arrow in the slideshow below, or scroll down to see each game.
This black-and-white top-down racer was Atari's 1974 entry into the world of racing games. The beastly cabinet weighed over 400 pounds and the graphics were extremely limited, as can be seen. The white dots trace the borders of the track, and players must avoid hitting the dots with their steering-wheel controlled car sprite.
Night Driver was notable because it was the first driving game to feature a behind-the-car view, something that would become common in racing games and would eventually lead to first-person and dashboard views. If you squint a little you can almost see how the 2600 graphics approximate the thrills of driving after the sun goes down.
Rally X from Namco was a top down, multi-directional racing game with multiple paths and opposing racers. The object was to race through the streets collecting flags and avoiding contact with other cars. It also featured a "radar" and a finite fuel supply.
This Namco arcade racer was one of the most influential racing games of all time. It was so popular that it even spawned a Saturday morning cartoon. The bright, third-person view graphics and smoothness of motion set the standard for racing games. The 2600 version of the game looked typical of 2600 arcade ports, but still managed to do a sort-of decent approximation.
SEGA's Hang On took the third person view of arcade racers and substituted a motorcycle for a race car. Even cooler, the arcade cabinet was controlled by a motorcycle controller players would sit on and use to lean into turns. It featured SEGA's "Super Scaler" sprite technology, along with gorgeous, colorful 16-bit sprites.
Rare Ltd. developed the 3/4 view radio-controlled racer for the Nintendo Entertainment System known as RC Pro-Am was one of many racing games that would come to the NES. The tracks weren't contained to one static screen, but rather scrolled along with the cars.
Hard Drivin' was one of the first racers to feature polygonal graphics. The driving was true to its name, and the home version could have easily been called "Impossible Drivin'." The relatively simple polygons of the time still required an awful lot of the SEGA Genesis console, and most players spent their time either trying to run over the low-res cow or crashing as spectacularly as possible.
Super Mario Kart for the Super NES spawned a hugely successful series of games, as well as clones and knock-offs. Using the Super Nintendo's "Mode 7 scaling" to simulate movement along a three-dimensional plane (a technique used expertly in F-Zero for SNES, as well), Super Mario Kart brought Nintendo's Mario characters out of the side-scrolling world of the Mushroom Kingdom and into the high-paced world of kart racing.
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