Introduction Road Rash II was developed and published by Electronic Arts, released for the Sega Genesis in 1992 as a direct sequel to the original Road Rash. It expands the first game’s combination of motorcycle racing and open brawling, letting players punch, kick, and club rival racers off their bikes with weapons like chains and…
Introduction Rad Racer II was developed and published by Square, released for the NES in 1990 as a sequel to Rad Racer. It follows the same pseudo-3D racing format as the original, sending players down a fixed set of named courses against the clock and rival traffic, but drops the original’s stereoscopic 3D glasses gimmick…
Introduction Super Hang-On was developed and published by Sega, ported to the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1991 as a home version of Yu Suzuki’s 1987 arcade motorcycle racer. Players race a superbike across one of four continental tours, each with its own set of named checkpoint stages, managing throttle and lean angle through tight curves while…
Introduction Top Gear 2 was developed by Gremlin Graphics and published by Kemco, released for the SNES in 1993 as a direct sequel to the original Top Gear. It keeps the Mode 7 pseudo-3D racing and nitrous-boosted overtakes of the first game while adding a proper career structure, a wider roster of cars to unlock,…
Introduction Rock n’ Roll Racing was developed by Silicon & Synapse, the studio that would soon become Blizzard Entertainment, and published by Interplay for the SNES in 1993. The game pits up to four players against each other in isometric combat racing across alien worlds, arming vehicles with machine guns, mines, and homing missiles alongside…
Introduction Top Gear was developed by Gremlin Graphics and published by Kemco, released for the SNES in 1992 as one of the console’s early racing showcases. Players race customizable cars across a series of circuits spanning multiple continents, tuning tire grip, acceleration, and top speed before each event and taking on rival racers with a…
Introduction Virtua Racing was developed by Sega’s AM2 division, released for the Genesis in 1994 as a home conversion of the studio’s own groundbreaking 1992 arcade racer, built around fully polygonal 3D graphics at a time when nearly every other console racing game still relied on 2D sprites or pseudo-3D scaling tricks like Mode 7….
Introduction Road Rash was developed and published by Electronic Arts, released for the Genesis in 1991 as a motorcycle racing game built around a distinctive combination of speed and violence rarely attempted in the genre before it. Players race a series of illegal street courses through the California countryside, competing against a field of rival…
Introduction F-Zero was developed and published by Nintendo, released in Japan in November 1990 as one of the SNES’s launch titles, reaching North America the following August. The game puts players behind the wheel of a futuristic anti-gravity racing craft, competing across four selectable vehicles with different speed, acceleration, and handling characteristics through high-speed circuits…
Introduction Super Mario Kart was developed and published by Nintendo, released on the SNES in Japan in August 1992 as the first entry in what would become the long-running Mario Kart series and one of the earliest kart-racing games to combine arcade-style driving with items and power-ups. Players race as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser,…
Introduction Out Run was developed and published by Sega, released in arcades in 1986 under the direction of Yu Suzuki, who had previously worked on Sega’s earlier hit Hang-On. Players take the wheel of a red Ferrari Testarossa Spider convertible, racing against the clock through scenic checkpoint stages rather than against other cars, with a…
Introduction Rad Racer, known in Japan as Highway Star, was developed and published by Square, directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi and programmed by Nasir Gebelli, with art from Kazuko Shibuya and an early soundtrack credit for Nobuo Uematsu, several of whom would go on to build the original Final Fantasy together the very same year. Square…