21 Best PSP Racing Games

Lightning McQueen is back in Radiator Springs, running an academy of student racers who are getting ready for the Race-O-Rama competition. His rival Chick Hicks has an academy of his own, and his students do not always race fairly. The races run from the beaches into the cities, and the final one puts a fully modified McQueen against a fully modified Chick Hicks for the trophy. The game debuted at E3 2009 as the sequel to Cars Mater-National Championship, and Mattel named a whole series of its die-cast toys after it. It was also the last Disney/Pixar game that THQ published.

Licensed movie racers rarely get a kind word, so it is a surprise that players keep bringing this one up. They call it a surprisingly good racer that hardly anyone mentions, which is high praise for a film tie-in.

Cars is the racing game of the 2006 animated film, and you play Lightning McQueen on his quest to win the Piston Cup. The voice cast from the film returns, apart from one swap: Keith Ferguson took over from Owen Wilson as McQueen on the PSP version. The PSP version differs from the main console release, with its own take on the open-world story and events. The PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS versions each earned a Platinum Sales Award from ELSPA, so plenty of film fans bought it.

Reviews were mixed on every system, and the PSP version is no exception. It keeps the film's world and its cast, and it does exactly what a movie racer promises.

Pac-Man World Rally is a kart racer where up to four players race as characters from the Pac-Man series and other Namco games. Smart Bomb Interactive made it and Bandai Namco published it in August 2006. The PSP version adds two exclusive characters and a track based on Dig Dug. Blinky and Inky are on the roster, so the ghosts finally get to do the chasing in a car. An Xbox version was cancelled, and a follow-up called Pac-Man Kart Rally reached iOS in 2010.

The PSP had no Mario Kart of its own, so this is where players send anyone who wants one. They say it plays like a Mario Kart style racer and has more fun in it than its low profile suggests.

Micro Machines V4 is miniature mayhem, with knockabout, breakneck racing at the fastest scale of miniatures. You race inch-long cars on tracks where everyday household objects look immense and can turn into lethal hazards, and the explosive weapon power-ups mean nobody drives politely. Hundreds of vehicles are in the game, each with its own strengths, so it rewards you for finding a favourite and sticking with it. It is built for multiplayer first, so bring a friend. That mix of toys and weapons is why it works best as a quick party racer.

It is the PSP's one top-down racer, and players treat it that way. When someone is hunting for a half-remembered racing game, this is the one they suggest.

GripShift calls itself a "nitrous fueled, star collecting, driving action game", and you speed through insane levels grabbing stars as you go. It mixes racing with a platformer's star hunting. Platform Publishing released it in North America in 2005, with Ubisoft handling the PAL regions, and it later reached the PlayStation 3 in 2007 and the Xbox 360 on Xbox Live Arcade. A Turbo Expansion Pack arrived in February 2008, but only for the Xbox 360, so PSP players got the base game. The tracks never let you simply cruise.

Players keep saying that not enough people know it. They describe a fun, challenging and unique mix of genres that hardly anyone combines.

F1 2009 has every circuit on the 2009 calendar, including the Marina Bay Street Circuit for night racing and the new Yas Marina Circuit. It only has the 20 drivers who started that season, so the mid-season driver changes never happened here. The Wii version is the only F1 game on that console. Sony used to hold the F1 rights and kept the sport on its own consoles. There are 15 driver aids you can switch on and off, so beginners and experts can set it up their own way.

Every car also gets KERS, the newly introduced boost system, even though only a few real teams used it. Players recommend it to anyone who likes Formula One, and say it is great fun for a fan.

ModNation Racers is a kart racer with comic combat, built around customization. You design the racer and the kart, then build the tracks they race on in the Track Studio. When it was announced, people compared it to LittleBigPlanet. The silent hero, Tag, never says a word, so the karts do all the talking. The style of the cars and characters is based on vinyl art and collectors' toys. A sequel, ModNation Racers: Road Trip, was a launch title for the PlayStation Vita in February 2012.

The PSP version has cut-down creation tools compared to the console games. Players still say the track builder is good enough for a handheld, and that the racing itself is a lot of fun, a fair stand-in for Mario Kart.

Underground Rivals was the first Need for Speed on the PSP. You customize 20 tuner cars and race them on 10 new circuit tracks across eight modes, including Drift Attack and Rally Relay, and in one of them you must change vehicles after the first lap. Every race takes place at night, and there is no free roam. Visual parts come only in body kits, Street Cross is heavily based on Street X, and the game supports wireless and party play multiplayer. It also includes the EA Pocket TRAX music visualization player for the soundtrack, and you can tune both the performance and the style of your ride.

Players point to it as the Need for Speed worth owning on the PSP.

The PSP version of Most Wanted pits you against the Blacklist, the best street racers in the city, in races and police pursuits. It came out alongside the console game, but it has its own gameplay and an online multiplayer mode. The console version sold over 18 million copies, the best seller in the series, so the portable one had a lot to live up to.

It does not quite get there. Players say the portable version is a step down from the console game, and some find it repetitive. Police chases were already part of the series, but Most Wanted is where they became a complex system. Even so, the Blacklist chase is the reason to play.

Sega Rally Revo has terrain that deforms as you drive over it, and the surfaces run from loose gravel to snow-covered mountain passes. There are 34 vehicles in three groups, from four-wheel-drive cars to classic rally machines, and 16 tracks across six environments. Sega built it at its racing studio in Solihull, England, and named it Revo because it meant the game to be a revolution in rally racing. The sales missed Sega's expectations, and Sega Racing Studio closed in April 2008.

Players call it light, brainless fun, the kind of game you open for a few races in a spare minute. It is not deep, and it does not need to be.

Burnout Dominator brings back draining a complete boost meter without stopping, a feature last seen in Burnout 2. It adds four new modes, including Maniac Mode, where dangerous driving earns the biggest scores. The PSP version has Burnout HQ for uploading scores and downloading new tracks. Each track has a forward and a reverse layout, 12 tracks in all. Spiritual Towers is based on Kuala Lumpur, one of the first tracks to show that city in any racing game. It was the last Burnout released on both the PlayStation 2 and the PSP, and Criterion was busy with Burnout Paradise at the time.

Players like to name it next to Burnout Legends. Some prefer it, saying it is more polished and has more fun mechanics.

Street Supremacy is part of the Shutokou Battle series. You join a team, level up, recruit rivals and take control of the Tokyo highways, on a map built from Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 that is split into zones controlled by the rival teams. It is the only game in the series where rivals can change teams and teams can disband. One rival team is called No Loser, which is not how its reviews went.

It came out in Japan in April 2005 and reached North America in February 2006. Critics gave it poor reviews, mostly for the loading times and driving. Players disagree. They call it a hidden gem and a great wangan style game.

Wipeout Pulse is set in 2207, ten years after Wipeout Pure. There are eight teams with one ship each, and every ship differs in handling, speed, acceleration and shield strength. Studio Liverpool built it from fan feedback on Pure and tried to cut the repetition people had complained about. Four downloadable packs each added a ship, though only in Europe. The team decided early to focus on new content rather than bringing back old tracks. It has sixteen licensed tracks from electronic artists, including Kraftwerk.

Critics praised the graphics and presentation, though some found it repetitive and hard. Players call it great fun and say it is different enough from Pure that you want both games.

Wipeout Pure was the first Wipeout on the PSP, and it launched with the system in North America. You race in the FX300 Racing League with ten anti-gravity vehicles, two of which must be unlocked, and the faster classes demand much more precise steering. Studio Liverpool started work in August 2003, and the team built entirely new user interfaces and algorithms to hit the PSP's North American launch. The European release has four exclusive tracks. Game sharing let one copy send a demo over wireless to up to eight players.

Reviewers praised the graphics and track design, with only occasional frame rate dips. Players pair it with Pulse as a fan favourite.

L.A. Remix is the PSP take on Midnight Club: Los Angeles, an open-world racing game from Rockstar San Diego. You enter street races and time trials, and the freeway battles earn you money and reputation to unlock vehicles and upgrades. The city is open, so you drive through it without loading separate tracks. On the console, the map is the size of all three cities from Midnight Club 3 combined, and the developers boasted you could jump from career mode into an online race in under ten seconds.

Players treat the series as the big open-world arcade racers of the PSP. They say it is a go-to pick for car selection and free roaming.

Ridge Racer 2 was released in Japan as Ridge Racers 2. It is the 14th game in the series and more of an update than a true sequel, with the same engine as the first PSP game. It includes every track from every PlayStation Ridge Racer game, and 62 fictional cars. The Special Class even has a Pac-Man car, now a miniature aircraft with Pac-Man piloting it. Edge magazine ranked it 70th on its 100 Best Video Games in 2007, and Famitsu gave it 32 out of 40. North America did not get an official release until December 2022.

Players call it fantastic and addictive, and say the racing is crisp.

MotorStorm: Arctic Edge is an arcade racer set in Alaska, where you race eight other drivers on icy mountain tracks. Avalanches and broken ice bridges are real dangers, and heavier vehicles can make a bridge fall apart, which closes a shortcut. You race everything from cars to snowmobiles. A PlayStation 2 port by Virtuos came out the same year. The Wreckreation Mode adds more game types, including a classic Free Play where you pick a race type and a track. The PSP version supports online races for six players, plus custom soundtracks and a Photo Mode.

Players recommend it to almost anyone who asks. They say the hardest difficulty is chaotic but still fun.

Burnout Legends takes the most explosive moments of the Burnout series and packs them into a handheld. It has many tracks and modes from the first three games, and you use your car as a weapon to take out rivals and cause spectacular crashes. In World Tour there is an Eliminator mode, where the lowest ranking car goes out on each lap. You only start with one random car for each class, and there are five collector cars to win in each. The PSP version received mostly positive reviews.

Players describe it as the Burnout 3 experience in your pocket, and name it as a go-to PSP racer.

Ridge Racer was a launch title for the PSP, released in Japan on 12 December 2004 and overseas in 2005. It has been described as a compilation of the series, with tracks, cars and remixed music from the 1990s games. A Nitrous Gauge holds three tanks, and Hiroshi Okubo assembled a big team of composers for the soundtrack. Director Kenya Kobayashi wanted to give fans what they were after while making the most of the hardware. Because it launched with the system, it was one of the first racers many PSP owners ever played. Production was delayed because the team had to review rights and contracts.

Players call it amazing and name it a favourite. It is the arcade answer to Gran Turismo.

Own the City shares its name with the console game, but it is a different game. It has no canyon racing or drift racing. Instead, you build a gang of the best racers and take over the city's territories, driving in the open world of Most Wanted with the tuner culture of Underground. Police pursuits happen only in free roam, so nothing chases you during a race. A light story is told in comic book style illustrations, and Assassins replace the console's Scouts, taking out several rivals at once with deployable spike strips.

Players choose it as the Need for Speed to play on the PSP, ahead of Most Wanted.

Gran Turismo made its debut on the PSP with 35 tracks and more than 800 cars from the world's top manufacturers, all of them yours to trade or share. It arrived after five years of delays and went through a string of working titles, including Gran Turismo Portable and Gran Turismo 4 Mobile. It launched alongside the PSP Go in October 2009 and had sold 4.67 million copies by September 2017, one of the best-selling PSP games.

Series director Kazunori Yamauchi said the hard part was fitting the game into the small memory space. Players call it the most impressive racer on the handheld, with one weak spot: there is no real career mode. It is still a staple.