A Need for More: Evolution of the Arcade Racer

Racing games have been a staple of gaming practically since the inception of game consoles. There’s something about a quality racing title that brings out the competitive spirit within gamers. Much like first person shooters and fighters, being able to boast that you are indeed the fastest among your core group of pals, or as time progressed and online gameplay became more and more mainstream, the world.

Yet for the longest time, racers followed practically the same model. All the game would require would be essentially the gas button and the D-pad to make turns. It was simple, easy gameplay that was at the heart of the arcade racer. Titles like Ridge Racer, F-Zero, and many, many others became instant classics. However, there wasn’t a whole lot to differentiate these titles between others, though there was the occasional exception, such as Mario Kart, which featured launching shells and speed power-ups along with the core racing. But all in all, the same gameplay model was mostly the same across all these titles: Get to the finish line faster than your opponents, and worry about nothing else.

Ridge Racer began a classic and now its becoming a future hit classic for the next-gen era.

With the advent of the Playstation, however, things changed. With more powerful hardware and larger storage within the CD media used by Sony’s console, we eventually saw the release of the very first edition of Gran Turismo, which turned the entire racing genre on it’s ear. Special to Gran Turismo was the inclusion of licensed cars and parts, and it’s attention to realistic physics, making the cars control more realistically at the expense of the speed that had always been the hallmark of racers. After the release of Gran Turismo, developers then began to follow the new gameplay of realism over pure speed, seeing who could put more licensed vehicles in their game, or who could have the tightest turning radius in theirs. Games began focusing more and more upon the realism, and seeing a pure arcade racing title release was rare indeed. However, as the current generation of consoles rolled through, we began to see a sort of “comeback” for the old arcade racer.

The first notable example of this is Burnout. Bringing us back to the older days of arcade racers, Burnout and it’s three sequels also changed up the formula by adding an extra peice to the arcade racer puzzle: complete and utter wanton destruction. Despite being arguabally the fastest games ever created, Burnout has always asked the gamer ‘Why go around it when you can go through it?’. Burnout is arguabally the best arcade racing game available, and it’s the basic desire and urge to crash and tear apart your car that makes it such great fun.

Burnout added the element of destruction arcade racing, where as Project Gotham chose style.

In a different vein, Project Gotham Racing did not reward you for smashing the ever loving crap out of your vehicle, but rather, make the most stylish moves possible so you could be rewarded Kudos. Also unlike Burnout one of the greatest mainstays of Project Gotham is the sheer joy of getting behind the wheel of some of the fastest, most stylish cars in the world. Porsches, Lamborghinis, Audis, and BMWs were among the many fancy cars you could drive your way to victory in. Through the addition of using style as well as speed, Project Gotham Racing became a racing game favorite.

Finally, and possibly the most underlooked arcade racer released this generation, we have the Midnight Club series which took arcade racing to the world of night time illegal street racing, and practically created a sub genre of racing (look at games like Need for Speed: Underground and Street Racing Syndicate. Like Burnout, Midnight Club was well known for it’s blazing sense of speed and lack of regard for realism, as well as hopping into some slick looking, ultra fast cars. However, it should be mentioned that with the third edition of the game, DUB Edition, Rockstar added licensed vehicles, as well as the ability to tweek and tune the vehicle’s performance for the gearheads who liked to get under the hood of the car.

With the Xbox 360 coming soon and <i.Project Gotham Racing 3 set as a launch title, we’ll get to see how the arcade racing genre can further evolve on next generation hardware. If PGR 3 is as good as we all hope it will be, and is any indication of what we can potentially expect from racers, I think we’ll all be in for a pleasant surprise.