The five best racing games of the 1980s | FOS Future Lab

Pole Position, Pole Position 2, Final Lap – 1981, 1982, 1988

If we didn’t start with Pole Position, this wouldn’t be a legitimate list. So many firsts, so much inspiration. This game set the tone for pretty well every F1 circuit racing game to come and so many beyond. Of course, coming in 1982, it should come as no surprise that this was an arcade game, running first on the Namco arcade game board. It grew to be the most popular coin-operated arcade game of 1983 and the highest-grossing arcade game in North America.

The game itself? A third-person F1 racer, not unlike what we have today, only with graphics and gameplay befitting the period. It was however the first to feature a qualifying lap, the first to feature a track based on a real circuit, in this case Fuji Speedway, and was also the first to introduce checkpoints. The success of Pole Position cemented the groundwork it laid, putting the onus on the racer and the quality of racing to do well.

Pole Position 2 in 1983 was a minor update, adding extra track interpretations, including Indy, Long Beach and Suzuka. It also introduced new colour schemes and better crash detailing.

Final Lap, the long-awaited 1988 sequel, was a revolution again, allowing up to eight players at once to race at Suzuka with multiple cars from the 1987 season. Yes, this was the father of multiplayer racing. We suppose you could say it’s also, therefore, father of all modern day racing eSports.

If you love F1 games, read our list of the 10 best F1 games of all time. 

Out Run – 1986

Of course, how could we have a list of the best 1980s racing games without 1986’s Sega arcade classic, Out Run? It came before Test Drive, and long before Need For Speed, to afford the joys of piloting a one-off open-top Ferrari Testarossa on the open road to the masses. An instant success, it became a staple Sega title at arcades the world over. 

Though conceived by a small team comprised of people not assigned to other projects, the most difficult job in the conception of the game according to creator Yu Suzuki, was cultivating the feeling of fun, doing so with specific design elements and with the radio soundtrack. It’s not what you do in Out Run that’s fun. Ultimately, you’re on a time trial in a Ferrari, so that’s fun in itself but it’s the immersion and the environment – car included – that’s so memorable. Just a mention of it conjures images of that Ferrari and those billowing roads with palm trees on one side and the ocean on the other. 

Out Run has stood the test of time, releasing on countless platforms over the years, initially making it to home consoles and even to this day being available to download from mobile app stores. It’s genuinely timeless and taught us that we can have a slice of that supercar lifestyle for ourselves, without having to have a Ferrari on the drive.

Gaming in the 1980s? Well if you now have kids of your own, here’s a list of the six best racing games for kids. Start ‘em young…

Chase HQ – 1988

Like pretty well any road racing game that followed Out Run, 1988’s Chase HQ followed its lead, albeit with the addition of a bit of narrative. Perhaps laying the groundwork for aspects of Grand Theft Auto and Need For Speed, Chase HQ had players in the shoes of officer Tony Gibson of the Chase Special Investigation Department.

Enviable shoes indeed, given his pursuit vehicle of choice, a Porsche 928. The object of the game was to pursue and ram villains as they try to escape. No easy task given their hardware, with everything from a Lamborghini Countach and Ferrari 288 GTO to a Porsche 959 and Lotus Esprit. Given the ramming aspect of the game, it’s easy to wonder whether titles like Driver and Burnout took inspiration from Chase HQ.

Do you agree with the titles on our list of the nine best racing games of all time?

Hard Drivin’ – 1989

The 1989 arcade cabinet racer Hard Drivin’ might not seem high-tech today 32 years on but at the time, it was the Forza Motorsport/Gran Turismo of graphical racing game prowess. It was one of the first to utilise 3D polygon driving environments, as opposed to scaled 2D sprites.

Once again, it follows somewhat in the footsteps of Out Run, even down to the Testarossa-like car you drive in-game. That said, the driver’s view is in the cabin, rather than from the third-person view. The object of the game? Complete laps of a stunt track, with traffic, loops and other obstacles, without binning it. It takes some work and crashing is actually a big part of the game, when you consider the revolutionary for-the-time ‘instant replay’ feature, that shows your accident in an aerial third-person view. Hard Drivin’ very nearly didn’t happen, after the value proposition of the $10,000 cost of the game cabinet was brought into question. Consider that the next time you moan about the three-figure cost of a decent gaming PC or new-gen console...

How did gaming change? Have a look at the 11 best racing games of the 1990s. 

Test Drive II – 1989

Is Test Drive the longest-running racing franchise? First appearing in the late 1980s, the next entry, Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown, is expected to release some time in 2022. Granted, it’s been dormant for over a decade… but in 1989 it was firing on all cylinders. Test Drive II, otherwise known as ‘the dual’, put drivers in the hot seat in a Porsche 959, Ferrari F40 or a Lamborghini Diablo. The latter was added in the 1990s for the console versions.

As opposed to the original of 1987, players get to enjoy varied scenery, more cars and the option of time trials and multi-car racing, in addition to evading traffic escaping police as they drive at speed on the highway. The game was long-lived, receiving a number of added vehicles via data disk updates, as well as being ported to consoles in the 1990s.

So, those are our favourite racing games of the 1980s. It’s interesting to see where the tropes and trends that remain today in racing games were first coined. What’s your favourite? Did we miss out any that should be on this list?

Read our list of the eight best racing games of the 2000s.

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