7 Best SNES Racing Games

Rock n' Roll Racing was made by Silicon & Synapse, the studio that later rebranded as Blizzard Entertainment. You race across six planets, and the tracks are often reminiscent of a battleground. Your car carries mines and missiles, but blowing someone up only costs them time, since cars always reappear with full health a few seconds later.

It is widely known for its soundtrack. The team wanted songs by ZZ Top, but the fee was too high, so at the end of the project Interplay added licensed music and gave the game its name. In two-player mode, if only one of you has enough points to move on, the game asks "Leave your loser friend behind?" Retro reviewers pick it as the SNES racer to try once you have played the famous ones.

Top Gear was one of the first racing games released on the SNES. Gremlin Graphics made it for Kemco, and the same developers had made the Lotus games on the Amiga and Mega Drive. You race across several nations and have to finish in the top five to move on. There are four cars: the Cannibal is fast but has low tire grip and high fuel use, while the Sidewinder corners better. Fuel matters, because running out ends your race, and a pit stop costs valuable time.

The music is what people remember. Scottish musician Barry Leitch wrote it on a tight schedule, reworking some tracks from his Lotus Turbo Challenge music, and the soundtrack became a defining part of the game's legacy. Retro reviewers list it among the cheap SNES games worth your time.

Nintendo and Argonaut Software built the Super FX chip for Star Fox, but while they worked on it they also experimented with general 3D games. One of those became Stunt Race FX, first called FX Trax. You start with three vehicles, from a Formula One style F-Type to a 4WD monster truck, and you can unlock a 2WD. Shigeru Miyamoto had the designers emphasize realistic vehicle dynamics, so each one handles its own way.

Retro reviewers count it among the games that pushed the SNES, and say it was the only other game to truly make full use of the Super FX chip. One track runs through an underwater glass tunnel. The frame rate is very low, so the cars are heavier and clumsier than in other racers to match. It still plays smoothly, and it gave fans a taste of things to come.

Biker Mice from Mars was Konami's game of the cartoon about three Martian mice who ride motorcycles while defending Earth from the Plutarkians. It is an isometric racer in the style of Rare's RC Pro-Am. The mice ride their motorcycles, the villains each have their own vehicle, and every racer has a unique weapon. After every lap you get a random item, such as a nitro boost or a Mario Kart style invincibility star. In the PAL version, the star is replaced by a Snickers bar.

Retro reviewers say Konami made its licensed games better than they needed to be, and this is one of them. The soundtrack is driving heavy metal that makes the game feel even faster. It is a solid 16-bit racer from one of the very best developers of the era, and it also turns up on lists of overlooked SNES racers.

Uniracers came from DMA Design, the studio that later became Rockstar North. You race riderless unicycles along a 2D track built like a roller coaster, and the big ramps throw you into the air. Every stunt gives you a burst of speed, and the more elaborate the stunt, the more speed you get. Land it wrong and you wipe out, losing all the speed you built. There are nine tours of five tracks each, 45 in all. You can rename your unicycle, unless you try SEGA or SATAN, which the game rejects as "Not Cool Enough".

Retro reviewers call it one of the most unique and underrated games of the 16-bit era, and it was doing tricks years before Tony Hawk. Its unicycles were compared to the one in Pixar's short Red's Dream, and in the end Nintendo made no more carts, so it only sold the initial run of 300,000.

Super Mario Kart came out in Japan on August 27, 1992, and in North America a few days later. It is the first game in the Mario Kart series, and it is often credited with creating the kart racing subgenre. You choose from eight Nintendo characters and race around 20 tracks, picking up banana peels and Koopa shells to knock your rivals silly. It sold 8.76 million copies, which makes it the fourth best-selling SNES game of all time.

Critics praised its presentation and its use of Mode 7. One retro reviewer joked that this game, not Mortal Kombat, should have been the reason the ESRB was created, and anyone who has eaten a red shell will agree. Players name it next to Super Mario World when they list the SNES games to own. Plenty of people still find that nothing beats the original.

F-Zero was a launch game for the SNES, out in Japan on November 21, 1990, and in North America in August 1991. It is set in the year 2560, in a race that multi-billionaires based on Formula One. Four pilots each have their own hovercar, and the 15 tracks are split into three leagues, from Knight up to King. A race is five laps, and you have to finish each lap in a successively higher place or be disqualified.

Critics credit it with setting the standard for the racing genre and creating its futuristic subgenre. One retro reviewer summed it up in two lines: "You don’t improve the car to tackle the harder tracks. You improve yourself." Players name it first among SNES racers, ahead of Mario Kart, and still put it on their lists of SNES games to play. Captain Falcon was even meant to be the mascot of the Super NES.