15 Best PS Vita Racing Games

Jet Car Stunts started as a 2009 iOS game, and the Vita got a remake rather than a straight port. You control a jet car, a combination of a race car and a jet plane, and get it through platform tracks that hang in the sky, performing stunt tricks along the way. Grip Games redid the graphics for this version, and it has 36 testing tracks.

Critics did not take to it, and Metacritic gives it a weighted average of 52 out of 100. It plays more like a platformer with an engine than a race, which is exactly why it is fun for a few tries at a time. Miss a jump and you fall into the void, then try again straight away.

Switch Galaxy Ultra is a space racer about speed and nothing else. You blaze across the galaxy at breakneck speeds, weaving past obstacles and enemies, and the story is a thin excuse: you are collecting Tantalum for a company called Dakur Technology. Steering means switching from lane to lane, which is where the name comes from, and the speed keeps climbing the longer you survive.

The official description promises an insanely addictive game, which is what every official description promises. In this case it is not far off. It is a game built for short runs, and the Vita was a machine built for short runs, so the two get along fine.

MotoGP 13 has every track and rider from the 2013 season, in MotoGP and in its two smaller classes, Moto2 and Moto3. Milestone made it, and the Vita version came out alongside the PC and console versions. Career mode is the main single player mode. You start with a few wildcard events, earn a ride in Moto3 and work up through multiple seasons with the aim of becoming MotoGP world champion. Your own Personnel Manager hands you objectives along the way.

This is a sim, and it expects patience. Bikes punish a late brake far more than cars do. If you want a whole season of real motorbike racing on a handheld, it is the one to get.

Hello Games' managing director called Joe Danger 2 "kind of" a sequel to the first game. Joe is now a stuntman on movie sets, so every level is a film scene for him to ride through. It came out on Xbox 360 on 14 September 2012 and on PlayStation 3 that October, but the Vita had to wait until January 2015.

The wait did not hurt it. On Metacritic the Vita version holds 79 out of 100, close to the other versions. If you finish the first Joe Danger and want more of the same, this is more of the same with bigger set pieces. The jokes are better too.

WRC 3 launched in October 2012 with the official licence of the 2012 World Rally Championship season. It came out on Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the Vita. Reviews were "mixed or average" on Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave the Vita version all four sevens, a touch below the PS3 version.

It is a fair way into rally on a handheld, with real cars on real stages. Players who love rally on the Vita usually point past it to WRC 4, the next game in the series. If you already own WRC 3, it still does the job of throwing a car sideways through a forest.

Asphalt: Injection is a phone racer moved to the Vita. Like Asphalt 3D, it was published by Konami in Japan and Ubisoft in the rest of the world. It has 52 licensed cars and 15 race tracks taken from the Android version of Asphalt 6: Adrenaline. Career mode is where you unlock tracks and cars, and the Multiplayer mode lets you race other people online.

Players call it a fun arcade racer and agree it is not much more than that. Do not expect a driving model with any weight to it. Expect fast cars and a nitro button you will press far too often, and it delivers that much.

F1 2011 came out in 2011 on Windows, 3DS, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, then reached the PlayStation Vita in 2012 as a launch title for the system. It covers the 2011 Formula One season, and the engine is based on EGO 2.0. Getting a licensed F1 game with real teams and tracks on a handheld on day one was a strong start for the Vita.

Players still recommend it, and some say it showed what the Vita could have done with more support. It is a proper racing game rather than an arcade toy, and you can tune the difficulty down until the cars stop spinning out at every chicane.

Joe Danger came out on PlayStation 3 as a download in June 2010, made by Hello Games. Joe is a stunt rider, and each course mixes racing with tricks and jumps. One of the game's best features came from a bug that let players jump as often as they liked in mid-air. The team decided it was fun and kept it as a double jump. The game was nominated for the grand prize at the 2010 Independent Games Festival.

The Vita version arrived years later, and players who tried it remember having a great time with it. It is a game to dip into for a few minutes, then lose an hour to.

Urban Trial Freestyle came out on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita on the PlayStation Network on February 19, 2013. You ride a trial bike through stunt courses built out of a city, chasing fast times and big stunt scores. By April 2014 it was one of the best-selling games on the PlayStation Network, ranking #3 for the Vita. It later went to 3DS, iOS and PC, and got two follow-ups: Urban Trial Freestyle 2 and Urban Trial Playground.

Players call it good fun and a good deal for a low price. It wears its Trials influence openly. Nobody bought it expecting anything else, and nobody seems to mind.

Road Trip is the sequel to ModNation Racers, and its gameplay is similar to its predecessor on the PlayStation 3. You build your own racer and your own tracks, then race them. It was one of the PS Vita launch titles, and reviewers praised the touch and handheld controls. IGN disliked the load times. Sony Interactive Entertainment shut down the online side on July 1, 2017, so sharing tracks is gone.

Players call it a solid kart racer that works well for one quick race at a time. The editor is still there for anyone who would rather spend an evening building a track than racing on one.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed reached the PlayStation Vita in December 2012. Its big idea is in the name: at certain points in a race your car turns into a boat or a plane to reach paths you could not use otherwise. Plane mode is the fastest form, and some tracks terraform as you race, so each lap plays differently. In the Japanese version, the blowfish weapon was swapped for garbage Puyos from Puyo Puyo.

It received positive reviews, with critics praising the character roster and major improvements over the first game. Players keep naming it among their favourite games on the Vita, and it is the best pick here for racing with friends.

Ridge Racer was a launch title for the Vita. It is the 5th handheld game in the series and the first on a Sony platform since 2006's Ridge Racer 2. It was the first and only game in the series developed by Cellius. Credits earned from races buy car upgrades, and downloadable content added new cars and courses, as well as music tracks from earlier games. The Hornet from Sega's Daytona USA even makes a cameo as DLC.

The problem was how little came in the box. Players agree it is good fun but very light on content. Plenty of them kept playing it anyway, because the drifting is still pure Ridge Racer.

MotorStorm RC shrinks the series down to radio-controlled cars. It is the fifth game in the MotorStorm series and the first released for the PlayStation Vita, with 8 styles of vehicles and 16 tracks built out of 4 returning areas. Eurogamer praised its instant restarts and its dubstep soundtrack, and IGN called it "refreshingly simple". It was nominated for Racing Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. Awards and lost to Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

Many players got it free in the Vita's early days and remember it as quite fun. One player put it next to our number one as "two of the best arcade racers on the platform".

Most Wanted is the nineteenth title in the Need for Speed series, made by Criterion Games and released in 2012 on PC, consoles, phones and the PlayStation Vita. It takes on the gameplay style of the first Most Wanted, but it has no story. Autolog, the friend rivalry system from Hot Pursuit, is built into the game world instead of a menu. It won Best Driving Game at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards and Racing Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. Awards.

Squeezing an open-world Criterion racer onto a handheld was a real feat. Players often name it as the Vita racer to get, and for some it is their favourite game on the system.

Wipeout 2048 is a prequel to the original 1995 Wipeout, set at the start of the Anti-Gravity Racing Championships. It was the last game developed by Studio Liverpool before the studio closed, and the last mainline Wipeout title. Every event has a pass target and a harder elite pass target. Fail an event multiple times in a row and you can skip it, then come back whenever you like.

Critics said its visuals showcased the power of the then-new PlayStation Vita, but criticised its long loading times. Players still talk about how good it looks. It is the racer players recommend more than any other on the Vita.