Racing

A racing game is any game that involves competing in races through a surrogate playing piece or vehicle, either getting it from one point to another or completing a number of circuits in the shortest time. more...

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Many board games can be said to be racing games, such as Snakes and Ladders, Cribbage, or Formula Dé.; There are also toys made for racing, like slot cars and radio controlled cars.;

One of the more common uses of the term racing game is to describe a genre of computer and video games. Racing games are either in the first or third person perspective. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings, and feature any type of land, air, or sea vehicles. In general, they can be distributed along a spectrum anywhere between hardcore simulations, and simpler arcade racing games.

History

The arcade title Night Driver, released by Atari in 1976 was generally considered as the progenitor of the genre. Night Driver's premise was very simple; drive a car down a road without crashing, for as long and as fast as possible. While it is definitely challenging, it is not competition racing. True "racing" as we know it was started by another Atari game, Pole Position, in 1982. This time the player has AI cars to race against, and time limit to keep pushing the players to go faster. Pole Position is also the first game to be based on a real racing circuit.

Racing games in general tend to drift toward the arcade side of reality, mainly due to hardware limitations, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. The hardware back then just wasn't capable enough to handle the amount of graphics and physics calculation needed to produce a "realistic" driving experience.

In 1986, Sega produced Out Run, one of the most graphically stunning game of its time. It used two Motorola 68000 CPUs for its 2D sprite-based driving engine, and it became an instant classic that spawned many sequels.

In 1987, Midway produced Final Lap, the first arcade game that allowed multiple machines to be linked so you can have multiplayer races. In the same year, Atari produced Road Blasters, a driving game that also involved a bit of shooting.

In 1989, Atari introduced Hard Drivin', the first arcade driving game that included force feedback as well as 3D polygonal graphics. This is the first game where the wheel actually fights you as you take harder/faster turns. It also featured a crash replay camera view that plays back your biggest crashes. However, the 3D trend was not followed by the rest of the industry, who kept to 2D sprite graphics until 1992.

In 1992, Sega produced Virtua Racing. While not the first game with 3D graphics (see Hard Drivin'), it was able to combine the best features of games at the time, along with multiplayer machine linking, clean 3D graphics, and excellent car control (for its time) to produce a game that was above and beyond the market standard of its time, and basically marked the end of the 2D era of driving games.

Read more at Wikipedia.org