25 Best PS1 Racing Games

Rally Cross lets you power slide and force rivals off the road, and everything you do damages your car. It sits somewhere between rallying and off-road racing, on bumpy dirt courses where the jumps are half the fun, and up to four people can race at once on one PlayStation, which was a big deal at the time.

Critics loved the detailed graphics and how much there was to do, with a big pile of tracks and vehicles to work through. Its fans call it one of the most overlooked racers on the system, and they loved it even though it was hard. It got a sequel, Rally Cross 2, and in 2024 the original came back on PS4 and PS5 through PlayStation Plus, so it is easier to try now than it has been in decades.

Colin McRae Rally, the first game in the series, has twelve cars and more than fifty stages across eight countries. Colin McRae, the rally driver the series is named after, gave the team technical advice. Codemasters were not even sure a realistic rally game could work when they started, since rivals like V-Rally were only loosely based on the sport.

It worked. It sold over four million copies worldwide by 2002 and helped make realistic rally games a genre of their own. Players say it still holds up, though the hardest difficulty is brutal. One odd detail: the North American release in 2000 had only 11 cars, because Codemasters had lost the licence to use Renault by then.

Jet Moto 2 is the sequel to the 1996 game, and you still ride hoverbikes that skim over land and water alike. The courses are built around that trick, and the field shrank from 20 riders to 10, which the team said opened the game up to a broader market, not just hardcore players.

Reviewers liked the improved controls and the bigger variety of tracks, though some felt it changed too little for a sequel. The Greatest Hits version, called Championship Edition, runs at a higher frame rate and unlocks all the tracks from the first game. Our favourite bit of trivia: Chef Boyardee was one of the new sponsors, and the producer fought to make sure no rider ended up wearing it.

Demolition Racer gives you points for wrecking the other cars, not just for finishing ahead of them. Land on top of a rival and that car is destroyed on the spot, with a big bonus for your trouble. Your finishing place then works as a points multiplier, so the cleanest driver does not always win.

It comes from Pitbull Syndicate, a studio full of people who had worked on Destruction Derby at Reflections, and it plays like a spiritual sequel to that series. Players don't call it the best racer, but plenty call it the most fun. Critics agreed it was a good time, and it scored generally favourable reviews. If the two Destruction Derby games a few places up leave you wanting more, this is the next stop.

High Stakes is the fourth Need for Speed, and it takes its name from its nastiest mode. Two players race, and the winner gets the loser's car instead of prize money. It was also the series' first damage system, so crashes hurt both how your car looks and how it drives, and the repairs come out of your winnings.

The Hot Pursuit mode from the last game is back and bigger, and this time you can play as the police. Critics praised the graphics and the smarter computer drivers, and some compared it to Gran Turismo, although the frame rate stutters. Players who name it rate it highly, and some call it the best Need for Speed of all. Few games have tested more friendships.

NASCAR Rumble puts stock cars on 18 courses and lets them collect power-ups as they go. It was a real departure from the NASCAR games of its day: an arcade racer with real drivers from the Winston Cup and Craftsman Truck Series, plus legends and bonus vehicles to unlock.

The courses are spread across six different areas instead of the usual ovals, and the reviews were favourable. Win a championship and you unlock the legend championship, where you race against stars from the past. Players recommend it as one of the few games that give real cars kart-style pickups, and as a good laugh. The PS2 sequel dropped the NASCAR licence and became Rumble Racing.

Destruction Derby is all crumple zones and hit-and-run mayhem, with no rules and no pit stopping. You score points by wrecking other cars, and the developers kept the tracks small on purpose to increase the number of wrecks. The best mode skips the track altogether: The Bowl is a large, trackless arena where everyone just smashes into everyone.

Damage is worked out live from the speed and angle of every hit. Director Martin Edmondson said that without proper physics it would play like pool when the collisions are all off. Critics loved the graphics and the car damage. It also works with a link cable for two-player head-to-head races. Players remember it as plain fun, and some prefer it to the sequel, which sits one place higher.

Destruction Derby 2 has seven circuits and a Wrecking Racing mode, where you score by destroying or spinning the other cars. It is more of a rewrite than a sequel. Only the 2D collision code survived from the first game, and the British banger racing look made way for American stock cars.

Producer Martin Edmondson went to stock car races across the United States, noticed how much metal music they played, and brought in the thrash metal bands Jug and Tuscan for the soundtrack. Paul Page does the commentary. Reviewers praised the large tracks and the car physics, and it is still the one to start with if you want to wreck cars on the PS1. Its fans call it a favourite, and one that has aged well.

V-Rally started the series, with licensed cars from the World Rally Championship and stages spread over eight locations, from England and Sweden to Indonesia and New Zealand. It asks more of you than an arcade racer does. The cars behave like real rally cars, and it takes practice before the stages stop throwing you into the scenery.

It was a hit in Europe, selling more than two million copies as of November 1998, but it never really caught on in North America. Players remember sinking a lot of time into it, and some point out it was better known in Europe. Critics liked the challenge but found the controls overly sensitive. The team, later known as Eden Studios, had even planned a level editor for building your own stages.

Colin McRae Rally 2.0 has the real rally cars of its day, from the Ford Focus WRC to the Peugeot 206 WRC, and stages from Kenya to Finland. It also added something the first game did not have: an arcade mode, where you race other cars head to head instead of the clock. Nicky Grist, McRae's real co-driver at the time, is back in the passenger seat.

The PlayStation version earned universal acclaim from critics, and one review said it doesn't get much better than this on PlayStation. Players often name it in the same breath as V-Rally 2, and if you only try one rally game from this list, it should be one of those two. It even made it to Japan, where it came out as Colin McRae the Rally 2.

Racing Lagoon is a racing RPG set on streets modeled after the real roadmaps of Yokohama. You play a new member of a street racing team in 1999, trying to piece together your own forgotten past and a mysterious race that took place ten years earlier. Win a race and you can take a part from your opponent's car.

The story borrows from the illegal street racing of 1980s Japan, and many of the cars were recreated exactly, without any carmaker's licence. Noriko Matsueda's soundtrack mixes jazz and techno with live saxophone, and it is a reason to play all by itself. It never left Japan, but players point newcomers to the English fan translation. At home it sold over 140,000 copies despite mixed reviews.

Chocobo Racing lets you race the Chocobo against characters from the Final Fantasy world, Cloud and Cid among them. The Moogle and the Black Mage join the grid too, and most of the music is built from songs from earlier Final Fantasy games. Beat the story mode and you unlock secret racers, plus the chance to build a custom racer of your own.

Critics were cool on it. Reviews were average, and it was always measured against Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, which is a tough crowd for a kart racer starring a bird. Its fans love the way it looks, and they recommend it loudly. It came out in Japan in March 1999 and reached North America that August, and it is a must for Final Fantasy fans who also like to race.

Speed Freaks is a kart racer from Funcom's studio in Dublin, and it took three years to make. You race around the tracks with missiles and slime to throw at your rivals, and up to four people can play with a multitap. The team believed it was only the second racing game on the PlayStation to use Gouraud shading, a smoother way of lighting 3D shapes, and it still looks clean today.

Speed Freaks is the kart racer North America knew as Speed Punks. Players call it an underrated gem that gives Mario Kart 64 a run for its money. Reviews were favourable too, and the league setup keeps you coming back, since finishing the Easy league opens Medium, and Medium opens Hard.

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit puts exotic cars in illegal street races, with the police trying to catch you. The police are smarter than in the first game and use several tactics to stop you, from you to the other racers. Most tracks also contain one or more secret shortcuts, which you usually find by accident in the middle of a chase.

Players name it without much argument, and it is the highest Need for Speed game on the list. The idea stuck around for a long time. It got a direct sequel in 2002, and in 2010 Criterion Games made a new Hot Pursuit as its successor. The races mostly take place in North America, across all sorts of settings and climates, and it is still one of the best police chase games on any console.

Jet Moto swaps cars for hoverbikes that ride close above the ground, over land and water alike, and most of its courses are built around that. The PlayStation could not run the full physics for everyone, so only you get the real physics system, and the 19 computer riders use a simpler one.

Reviewers liked how it played but criticized its high difficulty. The team first planned to knock you out of a race for good if you fell off the track, then decided it was not fun to be forced to go slow or suffer an instant defeat. Players remember it as really fun, with some awesome tracks. Thanks to the game's popularity, it came back on the Greatest Hits budget line in August 1998.

Wipeout 2097 is the second Wipeout, and players in North America know it as Wipeout XL. It began as a tracks add-on for the first game and grew into a full sequel, with dramatic improvements to the controls and the graphics.

The soundtrack is the famous part. It has licensed electronic music from The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy, an early example of real chart music in a video game. Psygnosis made it in Liverpool, and The Designers Republic designed the art again. Win gold on every track in the first three classes and a full season mode opens up, with hidden tracks after that. Players say it still holds up, fast and tight.

V-Rally 2 is the highest rally game on the list. It has the cars from the 1999 World Rally Championship season, and instead of storing each track as a finished 3D model, the game builds every stretch of road from a line and a few settings, like weather and slope. That trick is what let the team fit so many stages on one disc.

The producer said they wanted the fun and arcade spirit of Out Run, mixed with real driving feel. It was originally planned as a Nintendo 64 game too, but that version was cancelled early on. Players loved it as kids, and some still call it the most fun rally game they have ever played. Reviews were favourable, and it was followed by V-Rally 3 in 2002.

Wipeout 3 was the first game in the series to stay exclusive to the PlayStation, and it moves the racing to a futuristic city. Sony gave the team a small budget and only nine months to finish it before the PlayStation 2 arrived. It was also the first Wipeout to use the analog sticks on newer PlayStation controllers, so the ships finally steer smoothly.

DJ Sasha picked the music, with contributions from Orbital and The Chemical Brothers, and The Designers Republic designed the menus and the courses to look like a believable future. Critics loved how it looked and sounded. Players single out its music and its sci-fi look, and some pick it over every other Wipeout. It was the last Wipeout on the original PlayStation, and it sends the console off in style.

Rollcage's selling point is its physics, which let cars drive on walls and ceilings. The idea is that air rushing over the cars at extreme speeds holds them on, so a tunnel is just another road. Attention to Detail developed it for Psygnosis, the publisher behind Wipeout, and it has the same love of speed.

The soundtrack is a big part of its charm, with original tracks from several artists and the Fatboy Slim song Love Island, and Psygnosis even put out a limited soundtrack CD in the US. Players remember its sense of speed and its soundtrack, and plenty loved it as kids. The PlayStation version got favourable reviews, and a sequel, Rollcage Stage II, followed in 2000.

Rage Racer is the third Ridge Racer on the PlayStation, and the first in the series where race winnings buy and upgrade cars. It was also the first with a CGI animated introduction, and it introduced Reiko Nagase, who became the face of the series. Namco went darker this time too, with moodier colours than the sunny earlier games.

Critics liked the graphics and the driving but wanted more tracks, and some found the new look drab. Its fans say it doesn't get enough love, and they rave about the soundtrack. Every manufacturer also has a secret car, locked until you reach the top racing class, which is a good reason to keep going. It was followed by R4: Ridge Racer Type 4, which sits three places higher.

Wipeout is set in 2052, in the F3600 anti-gravity racing league, with four teams and two ships for each. The whole thing started as a conversation in a pub in Merseyside between Nick Burcombe and Jim Bowers, and it took 14 months to make. It was a launch title for the PlayStation in Europe, and for a lot of people it was the game that made the new console feel cool.

The music did a lot of that work. CoLD SToRAGE wrote the original score, and some versions add tracks from Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers and Orbital. Critics praised how original it was, though some criticized the physics. Finish the championship and a hidden track set on Mars opens up. Players do argue about what kind of racer it is, but nobody argues that it belongs here. Wheels are optional.

Gran Turismo took five years to make, and Kazunori Yamauchi's simulator went on to ship 10.85 million copies worldwide. That made it the best-selling PlayStation game ever. It has 140 cars and 11 tracks, and before you can enter most races you have to earn driving licences, which taught a whole generation how to brake properly.

Yamauchi started work on it in the second half of 1992, and at different times only seven to fifteen people were helping him. It averaged 95% with critics, and when GameRankings closed in 2019 it was still the highest rated racing game on the site. Players call it the usual top pick, and for some it was the only reason to own a PlayStation. Its sequel still beat it.

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 has 321 cars, every one of them made up, and eight tracks that double to 16 when you run them in reverse. You join one of four racing teams in a season called Real Racing Roots '99, and each team has its own story, told by your team manager between races. The team names nod to old Namco games, from Pac Racing Club to Racing Team Solvalou.

Critics loved how it looks and sounds, though some felt the cars drift too lightly compared to the older games. Players call it the arcade racer to own, with a soundtrack they still bring up. It is easy to find today, too: it came back on the PlayStation Classic in 2018, and on PS4 and PS5 in 2023.

Gran Turismo 2 splits into an Arcade Mode, where you pick any car you like, and a Gran Turismo Mode, where you have to earn your licences first. It has nearly 650 cars and 27 racing tracks, rally tracks included, which was a ridiculous amount for one game back then. It was also the first game made by Polyphony Digital.

It shipped 9.37 million copies by 2008. Many players simply call it the best racing game on the PS1. Completionists have a famous grudge with it: the game expects 223 events for 100% completion, but only 219 are available, so the counter never gets there. The soundtrack even has My Favourite Game by The Cardigans. So how did a kart racer beat it?

Crash Team Racing is a kart racer starring the Crash Bandicoot cast, and it plays a lot like Mario Kart. It was the final Crash game made by Naughty Dog, built in eight months by a team of 16 to 18 people. The story is pure cartoon: an alien called Nitros Oxide threatens to turn Earth into a concrete parking lot unless someone beats him in a race.

The secret is the power slide. Slide through a corner and you build up speed boosts, and once you get the timing, you never race the same way again. Critics called it a highly polished kart racer, and many argued it beat its competitors at their own game. They don't just call it the best kart racer on the PS1, either; some call it the best on any platform. The 2019 remake, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, brings it to modern consoles.