30 Racing Game Masterpieces You Need to Play – IGN30

As IGN celebrates its 30th anniversary, it’s my job to assemble a list of 30 racing games that can lay claim to being bona fide masterpieces.

It’s honestly a tricky sort of thing to curate. Racing games (and automotive cultures worldwide) are just too tribal for any one batch of racing games to be universally accepted as objectively the best of the best. When you’re dealing with a limited shortlist, you simply can’t inject someone’s favourite racing game without trimming a favourite of somebody else; any one entry will always come at the expense of another deserving candidate. The fact that the genre dates back over 50 years, all the way to the earliest origins of video games, only makes it more difficult. That is, for as long as we’ve had video games, we’ve had racing games.

And we’ve had a lot of really, really good ones.

In past racing retrospectives we’ve looked at things like overwhelming influence above all else – the racing games that literally wrote the rules of the road for others to follow. On other occasions we’ve restricted our round-ups to just a single game per series in an attempt to recognise a wider spectrum of greatness.

But the nature of a true masterpiece got me thinking about this in a slightly different way. In this instance, we’re not just talking about great racing games. We’re talking about the premier racing games that define entire developers to this day. We’re talking about the greatest works of the world’s most respected racing studios, from Papyrus Design Group to Polyphony Digital.

With that foundation in mind, here are IGN’s racing game masterpieces – 30 esteemed and extraordinary racing games that maintain a stranglehold on our imaginations and are regarded as high-water marks for the whole genre.

While we’ll tackle these in no particular numerical order, let’s start in the arcades, where the long legacy of racing games began.

The Autocrats of Arcade Racing

OutRun (1986)

I’ve said a lot of this before on IGN – and I’ll no doubt say it again – but the history of racing games is the history of video games. That’s how far the racing genre goes back. In 1974 Taito released Speed Race, widely considered to be the first vertically scrolling video game, ever. The first eight-player arcade game? Atari’s Indy 800, in 1975. The first-ever game to provoke the sort of media panics we’re still seeing 50 years down the track? Exidy’s Death Race in 1976. This is before Space Invaders. Before Pac-Man. Before Donkey Kong.

Trace back the tyre tracks and you’ll find all roads lead back to the arcade. It’s these legendary cabinets – wheels slick with palm sweat and seats sanded smooth by the sliding of several thousand butts – that forged the future and made the arcade the automotive cradle of our modern-day, high-speed civilization.

There are a number of arcade classics that are unmistakably masterpieces of the arcade era. Namco’s Pole Position from 1982 is without a doubt one of the most influential and important racing games of all time, establishing conventions for the genre still followed today. The 3D polygonal graphics of 1988’s Winning Run – also from Namco – was a first for the company and a stunning representation of the future of racing games.

However, if we’re talking about masterpieces it’s tough to ignore the likes of Sega’s highly innovative 1986 all-timer OutRun.

Following the strong success of motorcycle arcade hits Hang-On and Enduro Racer, Sega switched back to four wheels for OutRun. It was a sharp stylistic shift from Namco’s motorsports-oriented approach, eschewing F1-style open-wheelers for the raked gills of a fully licensed Ferrari Testarossa. It also opted for public roads with beautiful backdrops over bespoke and largely barren racetracks.

Creator Yu Suzuki regards 1986’s Out Run as a “driving game” rather than a “racing game,” and that’s a subtle but important distinction. That is, OutRun may still very much be a classic, race-against-the-clock arcade experience, but it’s also the common ancestor of Cruis’n USA, Test Drive, The Need for Speed, and more or less every modern racing game centred around planting your foot on the loud pedal in the kind of exotic cars you can only afford by being better than almost everyone else at a popular sport, or ripping off people’s pensions.

With undulating tracks, selectable “radio stations”, and a killer cockpit-style cabinet, the innovative and extraordinarily successful OutRun was unlike any racing game out there in 1986.

Daytona USA (1994)

No discussion of arcade racing masterpieces is complete without paying tribute to Sega’s Daytona USA.

After sneaking a few out to arcades in 1993, Daytona USA was widely released in 1994. Arguably the most recognisable arcade racing game of all time, Daytona USA is arcade racing perfection. There’s even more to this masterpiece than its cutting-edge, texture-mapped 3D graphics, its perfectly-honed, easy-to-play-tricky-to-master driving model, or its infectiously delightful theme song. As an arcade cabinet, Daytona USA is just as much a masterpiece in physical form and function – from its eye-catching yellow-and-orange colour scheme to its sturdy and famously judo-choppable gear stick.

Daytona USA went head-to-head with Namco’s similarly cutting-edge Ridge Racer in the mid-’90s. While Ridge Racer might have eventually enjoyed the better home release conversion, Daytona USA’s eight-player action rendered it untouchable amongst its peers.

Sega Rally Championship (1995)

While the legendary Sega Rally Championship is acclaimed for a lot of reasons, not least of all being the fact it was the first-ever racing game to simulate different levels of friction on distinct driving surfaces, Sega reportedly took some convincing to back the project. The company didn’t see rallying as an especially high profile motorsport category in Japan, which feels slightly odd considering three out of the four manufacturer teams in the WRC at the time (following the departure of Lancia) were Japanese. There was also a hesitancy to build a game around rally cars which, on account of their nature as regular street cars on off-road steroids, didn’t seem as aesthetically exciting to the suits as formula racers and exotic supercars.

Fortunately, the passionate team was able to persuade them of rallying’s merits and the rest is history. They were even able to convince both Toyota and Lancia to agree to license cars to the game: a Celica GT-Four as made famous by Didier Auriol, and the all-conquering Delta Integrale as made famous by Juha Kankkunen. They were two cars that actually never raced each other in the WRC (Lancia withdrew from the WRC at the end of 1992, and the ST205 Celica was campaigned in 1995 before… being spectacularly banned for an illegal turbocharger restrictor). However, both are now inextricably linked by their presence together in one of the most iconic arcade racing games ever made.

Sega Rally Championship’s slippery yet heavy handling model was an absolute hoot to wrestle with in the arcade, and hitting those jumps never, ever got old (and inspired the greatest Simpsons crossover meme ever, to boot).

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (1998)

The writing was certainly on the wall for arcades by the time Namco’s seminal arcade racing classic Ridge Racer found itself ported to Sony’s hot new home console in the mid-’90s. Gamers were shown a future where near-arcade quality 3D graphics could be transported into their own homes via a PlayStation, and race fans in particular found they could enjoy similarly speedy experiences without leaving the crevices they’d carved into their own couches.

Namco’s Ridge Racer series peaked in late 1998 with R4: Ridge Racer Type 4, which came as a franchise reinvention. Pushing what was possible for lighting and shading on hardware that had long since been eclipsed in terms of power and performance, Ridge Racer Type 4 made a strong case for being the most beautiful racing game on the original PlayStation – and it arrived with new cars, fresh and interesting tracks, and a light visual novel approach driving the campaigns. Perhaps best of all? It injected the whole thing with oodles of smooth Japanese acid jazz.

Hot Wheels Unleashed (2021)

Italian developer Milestone has been making racing games – primarily of the two-wheeled variety – for decades. Based on every established metric, it should be ludicrous to claim that Milestone’s masterpiece is an arcade-style racing game based on a popular toy license and unashamedly aimed at kids. Nothing about that makes sense.

However, regardless of what you call 2021’s Hot Wheels Unleashed – an anomaly, an exception, or otherwise – there’s no skirting the fact that it’s a remarkable racing game. Taking the toy-scale approach of Codemasters’ pioneering Micro Machines, Hot Wheels Unleashed is a blistering and imaginative racer with a sense of grand scale like few others as you race your tiny diecast cars through enormous, life-sized environments. With a dedication to detail that even places subtle fingerprints on the photorealistic car models – which also sport realistic injection mould lines left from the assembly process and authentic raised text on the chassis identifying their model names – Hot Wheels Unleashed still stops me in my tracks.

Highly approachable yet packed with advanced techniques, tempting shortcuts, and one of the best track creation suites in the business to master, Hot Wheels Unleashed remains one of the strongest arcade racers I’ve played in over a decade.

Burnout 3: Takedown (2004)

Over 20 years later, Burnout 3: Takedown remains the ultimate arcade racer. The fact that the Burnout series has been consigned to simply gather dust in the junk drawer of franchise custodians Criterion Games is a crime against car culture.

The racing is still pure and precise, its rampaging Crash Mode remains utterly addictive, and the aural embrace of its playlist of pop-punk bangers is a bittersweet reminder of the CD pouch that used to slide around the passenger footwell of your 1992 Ford Festiva. The one that smelled like wet socks and Lynx Africa. Maybe that was just my 1992 Ford Festiva.

Burnout 3 is at its most brilliant in Road Rage mode, where the goal is to execute the game’s titular takedowns. Various racing games since have tried to mirror the sensation of the bone-crunching impacts found in Burnout 3, but even veterans of its development have struggled to recreate its brilliance ever since.

Burnout Revenge was a high-quality follow-up, but the addition of “traffic-checking” – allowing players to simply punch through same-direction traffic – changed the formula. Watching NPC cars scatter like billiard balls slightly diluted the tension of skillfully weaving through traffic at breakneck speeds, losing some of that essential Burnout soul. Burnout Paradise later successfully transitioned the series into an open-world format and remains highly regarded, particularly following its 2018 remaster. Nevertheless, Burnout 3: Takedown stands alone. As one of the highest-rated racing games ever made, it isn’t just a genre highlight; it is a genuine masterpiece of the medium.

The Sultans of Simulation

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season – 2003

Defunct PC racing simulation gurus Papyrus (the developers of the highly influential Indianapolis 500: The Simulation and historical racing darling Grand Prix Legends) probably painted their masterpiece with 2003’s fan-favourite NASCAR Racing 2003 Season.

The last Papyrus NASCAR sim before EA Sports scooped up the license exclusively for 2004 through to 2009, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season may seem like a bit of an oddball entry for a list like this – but don’t underestimate how highly regarded it is amongst the oval racing faithful.

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season – the code for which actually formed the original foundation of iRacing as we know it – wasn’t just an incredible racing simulation upon its release. It remains an incredible racing simulation today, and a barometer against which modern NASCAR sims are still judged over 20 years later.

F1 2020 (2020)

2002’s Grand Prix 4, from racing simulation legend Geoff Crammond and MicroProse, is a stone-cold Formula 1 masterpiece – despite the slightly iffy technical state it arrived in. MicroProse went belly-up right after its launch, leaving the game marooned without a developer to issue any further patches. It’s also a famously fickle thing to get running reliably on modern computers, but modders have kept this masterpiece alive to this day. A modern and non-F1 licenced re-release of it dubbed Geoff Crammond Racing 4 is even due to hit Steam this year, with workshop support no less.

But if you’re looking for a modern F1 masterpiece you can play with a lot less fuss, it’s hard to ignore the likes of Codemasters’ F1 2020 – a game many regard as the very best F1 game Codemasters has produced during its current, long-running stewardship of the series. With a terrific, grippy handling model, the debut of the excellent “My Team” career mode (that introduced an extremely engaging management angle to the series, casting players as team owners AND drivers), and the long-overdue reintroduction of two-player split-screen functionality, F1 2020 was a wonderfully complete package at the time. It was also the last time we’d see the series’ garage of legendary historical F1 cars, plucked from some of the sport’s most famous eras.

TOCA Race Driver 3 (2006)

TOCA Race Driver 3 may have had different names depending on where you played it (in Australia you’ll know it as V8 Supercars 3, and in Germany it was called DTM Race Driver 3). Regardless of what you called it, however, it was like no other racing game around.

Race Driver 3 was rammed with a ridiculous amount of championships (well over 100 championships across more than 35 different motorsports, featuring fully licensed series like V8 Supercars and DTM) and was overflowing with tracks (more than 80 ribbons on 37 real-world circuits, plus more than a dozen fictional ones).

As I’ve discussed in the past, I could spend a morning conquering Mount Panorama in a V8 Supercar, and the afternoon sliding a supertruck around Oran Park, and I’d have barely experienced a sliver of what Race Driver 3 had to offer. Racing at Bathurst and Oran Park I wouldn’t have even left my home state let alone the country, and there was a literal world of racing available elsewhere in Race Driver 3 – from muscle to monster trucks, and Formula Ford to IndyCar.

Seriously, you can say, “They don’t make them like this anymore” about a lot of things, but they truly broke the mould after this one. Not even Codemasters quite makes them like this anymore. This many official licenses living under the one roof – with all the correct cars and tracks – just doesn’t happen. It’s clearly too expensive to achieve in the modern era.

Now, to be fair, Race Driver 3’s simulation sensibilities were a little streamlined for console audiences at the time, and it wasn’t quite in the same wheelhouse as hardcore PC products like, say, Grand Prix 4 or NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. However, you can find the spirit of Race Driver 3 in many modern games. Series like Forza Motorsport have shipped with a similarly eclectic range of world-famous race cars dressed in the iconic, official liveries we recognise, and modders have shoehorned mountains of real-life race cars from current and historical seasons (most of which never appear in retail games) into Kunos Simulazioni’s Assetto Corsa. Codemasters’ own GRID Autosport and Slightly Mad Studios’ Project CARS 2 are also excellent and effective riffs on the Race Driver formula, but they don’t have quite the same magic.

Dirt Rally 2.0 – 2019

Warthog’s Richard Burns Rally is rightly regarded as an astonishingly accomplished rally game, but that’s on the back of a potent modding community that has kept the game alive for over two decades. On the other end of the timeline, Assetto Corsa Rally is currently taking shape in Steam Early Access as a rally game with the potential to redefine the genre.

However, this doesn’t detract from the fact that Dirt Rally 2.0 is Codemasters’ rallying masterpiece, and that makes it an integral part of the Codemasters rally story that began back in 1998 with the very first Colin McRae Rally.

Hardboiled and demanding, Dirt Rally 2.0 is Codemasters at the peak of its rallying prowess and pushing its in-house engine to the limit. The result was a gorgeous and challenging salvo of stages from a better variety of continents than the original Dirt Rally, superb sound design, and great loose surface handling.

It is a crime against coils, clutches, and camshafts that Codemasters has paused development plans on future rally games, but hopefully we haven’t seen the last of what the creators of such memorable rally games have to offer.

The Demigods of Destruction

Test Drive: Eve of Destruction (2004)

After being merged into iRacing Studios mid-last year, Minnesota-based Monster Games are officially defunct. Monster Games, the developer of fan-favourite stock car racing classic NASCAR Dirt to Daytona, was never one of the 800-pound gorillas of racing development. While developers like Polyphony Digital and Black Box moved millions and millions of games, relishing the sort of success that made them household names in the business, Monster Games never built the same sort of profile. They were, however, the sort of racing studio with at least one absolute banger in their catalogue, which gave them the kind of if-you-know-you-know reputation enjoyed by teams like Sumo Digital (OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast), Genki (the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series), Rainbow Studios (Splashdown, the MX Unleashed series).

Test Drive: Eve of Destruction (or Driven to Destruction, as it was released as in PAL territories) might be one of the least-played games in this list – but anyone familiar with it ought to be able to vouch for its masterful approach to replicating the feeling of proper, grass-roots derby racing. The most memorable parts of Test Drive: Eve of Destruction are the race types it features that remain yet to be replicated elsewhere – even in the likes of the current pharaoh of fender-bending, Wreckfest. These include trailer races (where all cars are towing box trailers, boats, or campers), chain races (where pairs of cars must race around the ovals chained together), whip around races (where the entire field must race back and forth on the same stretch of track against oncoming traffic), and many, many more. An under-admired masterpiece.

Wreckfest (2018)

When the FlatOut series was yanked from Bugbear Entertainment after 2007’s eternally underappreciated FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage, it was hard to see what the future might hold for the Finnish demolition specialists. Just over 10 years later, it hit back with a mayhem-fueled masterpiece of metal-rending spectacle. Wreckfest didn’t just T-bone the destruction racing sub-genre; it pummeled it into the ground and drove a hastily-spray painted school bus over the smoking debris.

The menu presentation is a little vanilla but the elbows-out competition on track more than makes up for that. Wreckfest’s rusted-out rides ooze character from every dent and scrape, and tossing them into panel-punishing battle and pushing the damage model to the limit simply never gets old.

The Superstars of Style

Project Gotham Racing 2 (2003)

Back on the original Xbox, Bizarre Creations’ Project Gotham Racing franchise was one of four separate racing series backed by the first-party muscle of Microsoft. Four! That is, in addition to the first two PGR games, Microsoft also published Midtown Madness 3, the RalliSport Challenge series, and the original Forza Motorsport. It was a golden era, the likes of which are sadly long gone.

For clarity, one could easily make a strong case here for the likes of Project Gotham Racing 4 – which introduced bikes to the series before it sadly disappeared forever – but I recently told my son if he buys a motorcycle I’m backing over it. With that in mind, I nominate Project Gotham Racing 2 as one of the very best games that sadly defunct Bizarre Creations ever produced. PGR2 is a clinic in pick-up-and-play racing; sexy and slick on the surface, and surprisingly sophisticated beneath it. Packed full of all the hottest cars of the era and focused on tight racing through a range of real-world cities like Barcelona, Stockholm, Sydney, Edinburgh, Washington D.C. and many more, PGR2 rewarded quality racing and looking good while doing it. At least, it did between bouts of Geometry Wars.

Driveclub (2014)

Evolution Studios, which Sony unceremoniously shut down in 2016, boasted a strong catalogue of racing excellence. 2005’s WRC: Rally Evolved was a superb rally contender that boasts flourishes that still have never been replicated, and 2006’s MotorStorm (with its cutting-edge deformable tracks) introduced us all to the idea of a festival racer before we even knew what that was. However, it’s 2014’s Driveclub that has since emerged as Evolution’s magnum opus. Driveclub didn’t reinvent the wheel by any stretch; broadly speaking it offered a very familiar and an entirely conventional brand of racing. It had a disastrous start to life, too, and was immediately stricken by catastrophic server issues that crippled all of its social features. This was a big problem considering its single-player replay value was debatable.

However, shortly after its troubled release, Evolution augmented Driveclub with a set of genuinely astonishing weather effects. Alone, that doesn’t sound like a particularly interesting fact. What makes Driveclub a fascinating case is the fact that these wet weather effects have never been eclipsed. In the rain, Driveclub is an unprecedentedly stunning looking racing game. It looks so good to this day that gamers are constantly rediscovering it, floored by how good it still looks well over 10 years later. Just watch as the rain sloshes and moves with the wipers and cornering forces.

Long delisted thanks to the frustrating realities of expiring licenses that plague racing games with real cars, Driveclub has earned a robust reputation as a flawed masterpiece.

The Regents of Ruckus

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017)

Determining which of gaming most-loved kart racers wins the cup is a deeply subjective exercise. Some point to the original Super Mario Kart, the groundbreaking progenitor that established the genre’s enduring tropes, or Mario Kart 64 – a game which conquered every lounge room, bed room, and dorm room it ever entered. Of course, devoted fans of Rare’s Diddy Kong Racing regularly argue it ran rings around Mario Kart 64 during the late ’90s and, personally, I’m a ride-or-die proponent of Crash Team Racing’s tendency to reward those who can reach its high skill ceiling, rather than punishing them by putting a blue shell up their anus.

The definitive kart racing masterpiece, however, is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – which still stands as the final word on karting, even after the release of its Nintendo Switch 2 successor.

Representing the acme of 25 years of development, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is vibrant and delightful to look at, and it teems with content and personality. With piles of imaginative and meticulously designed tracks, responsive handling, a silky frame rate, and a ton of customisation options and racing assists, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe really is the premier family party racer.

Split/Second (2010)

Split/Second is a sidewinder missile of a racing game; fast, dangerous, and explosively destructive. The ability to weaponise the trackside environment as crushing traps for your opponents meant no two laps of a race typically played out the same way – before a collapsing building or crashing plane made a giant mess of the circuit.

With its fantastic circuit design, potent sense of speed, and multiple clever flourishes (including a clean HUD that moved all important information down to a small bar that trailed behind your car), Split/Second is a cracking arcade racer that never got its due.

Split/Second is proof nothing is fair in the video game business. When Split/Second emerged as a bona fide Burnout competitor back in 2010, the response from arcade racing connoisseurs was gushing. Perhaps if we’d know we were never going to get a sequel, we all might have been a bit more zealous about convincing more people to buy a copy. Unfortunately, Split/Second sold too poorly to kickstart the series a racing game of this quality deserved. While it was easily the best game Black Rock Studio (formerly Climax Racing) ever produced, it was also the last game it ever produced.

The fact that we also never got another proper Burnout game after Split/Second either is just salt in the wound.

Blur (2010)

2010 was a cursed year to release a killer new arcade racing game that dared to innovate and strike a claim as a fresh new force in the genre, because it was also the year Bizarre Creations released critically acclaimed cult-favourite Blur.

Turning the page from the much-loved Project Gotham Racing series, Bizarre reinvented its brand of arcade racing to include combat, resulting in a chaotic experience that blended PGR’s typical smorgasbord of real-life locations and recognisable, licensed cars with Mario Kart/WipeOut-inspired weapons and power-ups.

As fun as Blur’s high-speed spectacle was, it was enormously underappreciated at the time of its release. These days Blur is regarded as an unfairly forgotten arcade racing modern masterpiece, but unfortunately we never got to see an evolution of it as Bizarre Creations was shut down by Activision in early 2011 (less than four years after it acquired the studio in late 2007).

The Archdukes of Anti-gravity

F-Zero GX – 2003

If we’re talking about the origin of the species, the original F-Zero (released on SNES way back in 1990), was the first futuristic fish to flop out of the primordial racing soup and blast up the beach at 1000 kilometres per hour. The anti-gravity racing sub-genre as we know it was born in the cockpit with Captain Falcon.

However, it’s not particularly controversial to argue that it’s F-Zero GX, released in 2003 for the GameCube, that represents the peak of the series.

Characterised by its eye-melting speeds and unforgiving difficulty, F-Zero GX demands practice, persistence, and a high degree of track knowledge to perform well. However, its hectic 30-opponent grids, snappy controls, and silky smooth frame rate made committing to its brutal brand of racing a wholly rewarding experience.

WipEout 2097 (1996)

While F-Zero may have pioneered anti-gravity racing, it’s WipEout that made it mainstream. It can never be understated just how instrumental Sony’s original PlayStation was in making games cool, and the WipEout series (developed by esteemed British software house Psygnosis) was an extremely important chapter in that story.

However, while the original WipEout was a genuine smash hit – and a launch title for the PlayStation’s European debut – its immediate follow-up WipEout 2097 (or WipEout XL as it was known in Japan and North America) was where this anti-gravity icon hit top speed.

A perfectly timed blend of exciting and never-before-seen futuristic racing with a soundtrack sourced from the titans of ’90s rave culture (including Prodigy, Underworld, The Future Sound of London, and The Chemical Brothers), WipEout 2097 was the embodiment of cool.

Blasting through rollercoaster-style tracks to the pulsing energy of Prodigy’s Firestarter, WipEout 2097 was a glimpse of the future in more ways than one. The PlayStation wasn’t a toy; it was becoming modern culture.

The Captains of Car-PGs

Gran Turismo 2 (1999)

Few racing games are as important to the genre as the original Gran Turismo. First released in Japan in late 1997 and elsewhere around the world in May 1998, Gran Turismo went from zero-to-global phenomenon faster than a fully tuned twin turbo Mitsubishi GTO. It would go on to become not only the PlayStation’s best-selling game ever, but the grandfather of all modern console racing sims.

However, as unprecedentedly impressive as the original Gran Turismo was, there was nothing that could have prepared us for the leap that was Gran Turismo 2. To put it in perspective, EA’s Need for Speed II (which was released a little prior to the first GT, in early 1997) boasts nine licensed cars. Gran Turismo arrived with 140, all with their own tuning options, racing modifications, and nuanced handling. It was pure madness. Unheard of.

And yet, two years later, Gran Turismo 2 arrived with over 500. 500! On the same elderly console, crammed onto a pair of CDs, alongside over 20 tracks (including new dirt circuits).

Setting Gran Turismo 2’s intro to the driving beat of The Cardigan’s ‘My Favourite Game’ might have been a cheeky flex on Polyphony’s part, but I must’ve damn nearly burned a hole through GT2’s discs back when it was first released – so there was certainly a time around the turn of the century where they weren’t wrong.

Gran Turismo 4 (2004)

Sure, there are idiosyncrasies about Gran Turismo 4 that even back in 2004 I would’ve loved to have been able to change. The car list was inescapably lopsided and, while Japanese car culture was comprehensively covered, you couldn’t really say the same thing about the US or Europe – and the lack of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Porsche was an admittedly big hole that RUF models alone couldn’t fill. Six cars on track? Well, that was low in contrast to, say, the Race Driver series – and bouncing off them with a harmless thud always made a mild mockery of its simulator positioning.

And yet, despite any of that, GT4 is the stuff of legend. Pushing the PS2 to the brink of what it was capable of, GT4 was a racing experience so overstuffed with content it was hard to know where to start, and possible you may not ever fully finish.

GT4 is special because there’ll never be another racing game exactly like it. Sure, there have been several subsequent GT games – and there have been later games cut from the GT cloth that have proven legendary in their own right, like Forza Motorsport 4. But the days of singular and complete car-PGs like GT4 are long over.

GT4 couldn’t be fixed with updates after the fact, and it couldn’t be augmented with add-ons or extras. It had to be complete from the moment it was stamped onto a disc. It was done. No DLC, no patches. It’s a different approach. It’s an approach that demands you aim for perfection so that, even if you miss, the end result is still good. And GT4 wasn’t just good, it was incredible.

Forza Motorsport 4 (2011)

It’s true that Forza Motorsport games throughout the Xbox One era – and all the way up to the most recent but divisive Forza Motorsport for Xbox Series X|S and PC – have maintained the series’ fabulous feel and expanded the garage. Indeed, in the absence of any backwards compatibility support for the Forza Motorsport series prior to Xbox One, I often find myself dipping back into Forza Motorsport 7 for hilariously mismatched splitscreen racing against my son.

The consensus amongst the Forza faithful, however, is that Forza Motorsport 4 is Turn 10’s true masterpiece.

Some backstory: the PS3 era was a notoriously tricky one for the Gran Turismo series – the grandaddy of car-PGs. Even series creator Kazunori Yamauchi has previously conceded the PS3 era was a “nightmare” for the Polyphony team. Not only were GT5 and GT6 oddly uneven in quality (stuffed full of hundreds and hundreds of cars that had been drawn from its PS2 predecessors), but they also had frustrating priorities. For instance, like Forza Motorsport 4, Gran Turismo 5 features the Top Gear Test Track – the BBC’s massively popular motoring show was everywhere in the late 2000s. However, GT5’s ‘Advanced Level’ challenge for the Top Gear Test Track was a race in a 1944 Volkswagen Kübelwagen – a vehicle whose history of moving fast is limited to unsuccessfully trying to outrun being strafed by Allied fighters in World War II. The approach of Forza Motorsport 4, however, made it feel like you were stepping onto the set of that show and directly into a reasonably-priced car.

With fully modelled interiors for every one of its cars and the ability to apply highly detailed liveries to them, Forza Motorsport 4 was the absolute king of the car-PG format at the time. The fact that it dropped just as seismic shifts in car culture were imminent only makes it more poignant. You don’t have to just take my word for it, either. Just listen to Jeremy Clarkson in the game’s intro.

“We are an endangered species, you and me,” he riffs. “We fear for our love of roaring V8s and the smell of burnt rubber. We’re told to think of economy and the environment, not excitement and enjoyment. In an age of hybrid this and lentil-matic that, we are the odd ones out.

“Yet, there is hope. There is a haven. A place that celebrates speed, grip, gears, and fun. And it’s all here, for you to explore.”

The Overlords of Open World

Test Drive: Unlimited (2006)

Few games arrive as stunningly ahead of their time as Eden’s Test Drive: Unlimited. Today there’s nothing especially novel about games like Forza Horizon or The Crew being MMO-inspired multiplayer racers where players can meet up, cruise, discover, and race around their large open worlds. However, in 2006 this concept was cutting edge.

That said, even though TDU’s multiplayer aspirations were what made it trendsetting, it still functioned as a single-player game if that’s all you were after – and its lack of any forced online component is why it still remains playable today.

Set on a 1:1 recreation of the Hawaiian island of Oahu, TDU’s vast road network dwarfed its limited competition at the time, and it was as fun to cruise around as it was to race across. A lot of this was thanks to the authentic sense of ownership it communicated when it came to its vehicles, which had to be discovered at specialist dealers spread all around the island, and purchased off the lot by visiting them. Cars also had to be physically stored at garages in your Hawaiian properties.

TDU was at its very best during its lengthy car delivery missions and its epic, full-island events, like The Millionaire’s Challenge – an entire lap of Oahu that had to be completed within 60 minutes. However, combine the Xbox 360’s custom soundtrack functionality with TDU’s ability to roll down the windows and this was also a game that was built for open-world vibe driving.

Test Drive: Unlimited has since been far eclipsed by the games it inspired but, at the time of its release, it was an open-world masterpiece like literally no other.

Burnout Paradise (2008)

A game so nice they released it twice, Burnout Paradise is the overwhelmingly acclaimed final core instalment of the legendary Burnout franchise – and the first (and last) time Criterion unleashed its slick, speedy, and savage series upon an open world.

Moving to an open world and prioritising total freedom above all else did mean Burnout Paradise’s racing lost a little something. After burning through bespoke tracks, grinding and pinballing off walls and into the opponents that were always nearby, the open-ended point-to-point races of Paradise were something altogether different (and sometimes a little frustrating). I don’t know what the common consensus is – or even if there is one – but I’ll maintain all day that Burnout Paradise isn’t actually the best Burnout game.

It’s hard to argue against the multi-award-winning critical darling being a racing masterpiece, though. Packed full of collectibles and smashables, Burnout Paradise is also brimming with one of the last truly great racing game soundtracks. Checks out for a city that’s literally named after a Guns N’ Roses song.

Driver: San Francisco (2011)

The original Driver, released in 1999, was nothing short of revolutionary. When it comes to open-world, 3D driving games, the history of this entire sub-genre explodes right here with Driver and Midtown Madness in the last gasp of the 20th century. However, as much as I adore the original Driver (and it’s one of my personal favourite games, in any genre, of all time), there’s simply no ignoring Driver: San Francisco’s status as one of the most unhinged and unique driving/racing games ever made.

It is absolutely true that placing the main character of your gritty car chase simulator in a coma – and setting the majority of the story in a bizarre dream-state where he has the ability to supernaturally possess any other driver on the road – sounds absurd. It’s honestly difficult to grasp how this concept made it through a single meeting without getting laughed out of the building. However, in practice, this entirely unique system is not just incredibly entertaining; it’s immensely refreshing in a genre where brand-new, never-before-seen ideas are sadly rare.

For instance, if you need to win a race in Driver: San Francisco, you can do so in the entirely typical way of simply trying to drive faster than everyone else, or you can teleport into oncoming traffic to smash into other racers and pummel them out of the competition. It’s the automotive equivalent of being able to leave the football pitch in EA FC and help your team score by shining a laser pointer in the goalkeeper’s eyes.

But Driver: San Francisco’s goofy hook is only part of the tapestry here. There’s its brilliantly assembled garage that smuggles in a host of the most famous movie and TV cars of all time, and its pitch-perfect playlist of funk, rock, and soul.

It’s also a powerhouse of technical engineering, maintaining a smooth 60 frames per second on top of the ability to shift around the map almost instantaneously. It even boasts a two-player split-screen multiplayer mode set within the full open world, where both participants retain the ability to teleport at will, which is a truly wild achievement.

Forza Horizon (2012)

2012’s Forza Horizon – from UK racing supergroup Playground Games – flipped the script for open-world racing games and set the tone for well over a decade of dominance of this entire subgenre. Established street racing series suddenly found themselves competing with the might of the Forza Motorsport machine – only now it had been set loose on the open road. That meant not only the fine-tuned feel of the Forza brand, but also the gorgeous graphics and monster-sized garage of car enthusiast favourites (all with fully modelled interiors).

The original Forza Horizon was a stunning debut for a new developer, albeit one staffed with experts drawn from specialist racing studios from all over the UK. It was a pumping and thriving, day-and-night celebration of the automobile where the competitors weren’t just a selection of the coolest cars the planet has ever produced, but also planes, helicopters, and… hot air balloons.

The Forza Horizon games have been the gold standard in modern open world racing for well over a decade, and that trend started right here with this modern masterpiece.

The Kings of Customisation

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition (2005)

California’s Angel Studios (which became Rockstar San Diego in 2002) deserves a mountain of credit for being a pioneering force when it comes to the very concept of open-world racing. As the creators of the Midtown Madness, Smuggler’s Run, and Midnight Club series, this team wasn’t just in on the ground floor – they poured the foundations.

However, it would be remiss of us not to recognise the sheer mastery of Rockstar San Diego’s Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition and its memorable take on customisation as a core component. On the back of a partnership with custom car culture magazine Dub, Midnight Club 3 introduced real, licensed cars to the series for the first time. The effect on Midnight Club 3’s credibility as a dedicated and blinged-out deep dive into urban custom car culture was immediate.

With a soundtrack as painstakingly curated as its garage and its violent and high-velocity take on powered-up street racing, Midnight Club 3 remains regarded as a racing masterpiece of the PS2 and original Xbox era – no small feat considering the quality and quantity of competition at that time.

If you like your house real big, your cars real big, your belly real big, and, indeed, everything real big, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is calling.

Need for Speed Underground 2 (2004)

The Need for Speed series may have slipped in popularity from its blockbuster era throughout the 2000s, but it remains one of the most successful video game franchises of all time. The monumental commercial success Need for Speed has enjoyed over its 30-year history is something other racing franchises would kill for.

Everyone with a history with the Need for Speed series will undoubtedly have their favourites, and they’re likely to be quite different in a series as storied as Need for Speed. Sentimentally I’ll always love 1999’s Need for Speed High Stakes and 2002’s Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2.

However, if we want look seriously at the NFS games that can lay claim to being masterpieces, that means returning to the absolute peak of the NFS series back in the mid-2000s and saluting the legacy of long-term Need for Speed developer Black Box (which EA ultimately closed, shipping the NFS franchise over the Atlantic to Burnout developer Criterion Games, then to Ghost Games, then back to Criterion Games again). It means 2003 and 2004’s Need for Speed Underground games, and 2005’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted – games even the developers themselves know and regard as the undisputed crown jewels of the series.

While the original Underground was a major hit, Underground 2 took its action to an open world, pumped up the variety of cars on offer, and significantly bolstered the amount of customisation players could do to them.

Oh, and it’s also home to a slapping Snoop Dogg-infused remix of Riders on the Storm we never even knew we needed.

Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005)

2005’s Need for Speed Most Wanted took the world of Underground – the tuner-focused soft-reboot of the series that reinvigorated it in the wake of spiking interest in JDM car culture – and blended it with the police pursuits the series was famed for before its Fast & Furious-inspired pivot.

In this instance, Most Wanted was a savvy fusion of the two worlds of Need for Speed, reintroducing exotic cars alongside its roster of popular tuner models – and bringing back cops without discarding its newly established customisation pillar. Its story may be hilariously cheesy by modern standards, but its mega success made it the bestselling game in the 30-year history of the series, and it set the tone for the next two decades of NFS games.

Overall Masterpiece

If you’ve been counting along, that’s 29 games, arranged in no particular rank and gathered into loose groups that at least made sense to me when I started this process. But 29 games does not a 30th birthday make, and my final instruction is to settle upon just one racing game to be my overall masterpiece.

That sounds like it ought to be difficult. After all, it was a struggle narrowing this list down to just 30 in the first place. I don’t think I’d find it much easier on IGN’s 100th birthday.

But picking just one masterpiece? Picking just one wasn’t hard at all.

Forza Horizon 3

It’s Forza Horizon 3. It’s the answer today, and it’s the answer tomorrow. Honestly? It might always be the answer.

There’s just no real way to overstate how successfully Forza Horizon 3 speaks to me as both a racing game fan and a car geek from the moment I was old enough to crack open a Hot Wheels blister. Forza Horizon 3 was more just the follow-up to a pair of games I already rated amongst the best in the business; it was a game I’d wanted someone to make since I was around 10 years old.

This isn’t just a game that unfolds in my own backyard. These are the cars I’ve wanted to see in a game forever. Forza Horizon 3 arrived with the greatest collection of Aussie cars I’d ever seen in a game. Nobody was giving us this many. Most other racing games these days don’t give us any. The cars I’ve watched race on local circuits. The cars my dad owned. The cars my nan owned. The kind of stuff I see on the roads every day. The fact that it arrived just as the curtain was coming down on Australia’s 90-year history of building its own domestic car models made it all the more poignant.

Hell, even the trailer is a masterpiece. I still get chills when the truck launches off the sand dune in slow motion just as the music begins to swell.

I haven’t even mentioned its two high-quality expansions: Blizzard Mountain, a terrific, snow-covered take on the Australian Alps, and the first Hot Wheels collaboration that gave us a stunt-filled Forza experience the likes of which we’d never seen.

Maybe Forza Horizon 3 isn’t your favourite Horizon game. Maybe the Horizon Festival visiting your own country makes another installment the nearest to your heart, or perhaps the siren call of the brand-new Forza Horizon 6 is too strong to ignore. I certainly couldn’t blame you; Japan is the greatest map Playground has ever produced.

But as far as I’m concerned, Forza Horizon 3 is the ultimate racing game masterpiece. Hang it in the Louvre.