The Evolution Of Racing Games Since The 70's

Most of the people own a car in real life, even if they hate driving. Still there are things you can't do without the car, like shopping or taking the kids to school or friends. But online car games bring us a different experience and different opportunity to drive a car. You can race in high speed but without the fetid and tiredness, not to mention you can start over once you fail or crash.

Let's take street racing for example. These are tough races and require you to have high level skills and mental toughness, which most people don't posses in real life. In gaming it's not like that. Here everyone can participate in these races. You choose the car you want and drive the metal on the pedal. If you play multiplayer car games it's even better because you play with real opponents and not against the computer, so when you win it's a great feeling, even if it's online.

Another exciting car game genre is desert races, taken from Rally Dakar and other races in the desert. Desert races are considered the most toughest and dangerous races in the world. The take place in an extremely difficult environment and conditions. When you get stuck there is no one to pull you out or assist you, you have to make it all on your own, and changing an oil pump in the desert heat when you wear leather coat it's no picnic.

For the action lovers there are the classic Chasing games. You either play as a villain or a mobster that escapes from the cops, or you are a good guy on a mission. The missions can differ from game to game. Some games require you to deliver something to a certain point, in other games you need to reach a point within a specific time limit, and do that while avoiding all kinds of obstacles, challenges or other opponents. But the most popular car game type is the classic car racing. You race against other opponents, machine or real players, and you need to win them all. In here also you have several options, you can win by finishing a lap in the best time, or you need to make it to the finish line first regardless to the time factor.

To leverage the excitement and thrill and give the players a real time feeling, the gamer can choose a round circular track, a point-to-point track, a rally type race, sandy track, concrete track, autobahn, formula, muddy road, drifting style, monster truck, truck games, and list goes on and on.

This is why people love this genre so much, the possibilities are endless.

Other genres and publishers realized that too, and they started to combine their character elements and game style with races.

Mario games are a good example, Ben 10 games also. There are plenty of Mario racing games: Mario Karting, Mario Racing and more. Ben10 has even more games that involve racing or any kind of vehicle: Ben10 Motorbike, Ben10 Super Moto and others.

Car games have gone a long way since the early 70's, from the first ATARI and SEGA games. A lot of sub genres have evolved, and we see the changes in real motor sport also, the increasing popularity of car races and motorbike racing all over the world, so it's only natural that cars will turn out to be a significant genre in online games industry.

Forza 3 Tool: A Look Back into Video Racing Games

Forza 3 Tool: A Look Back into Video Racing Games

Article by Kevin Germain

Who doesn?t love a good racing video game? Racing video games have been popular since the 1970?s. One great aspect of racing games is that you can play as yourself or as a character. Games can have you racing anywhere from a real race track to a whimsical fantasy land. Whether you are an avid gamer or just a gamer for fun there is a racing game available for you.

Arcade style racing games were invented and released in the early 70?s. Many of these arcade games were single player overhead view noncompetitive racing games. These games allowed the gamer to race against a clock/computer. In the later 70?s video game companies broaden the spectrum to include competitive games where two players could race against each other. Early style arcade games often used black and white graphics. It wasn?t until Sega introduced Monaco GP that color graphics and the vertical view was introduced.

The 80?s brought major innovation to the racing video game genre. Not only were players allowed to drive their vehicles in all directions they were able to compete using the third person perspective. Music was also introduced to the backgrounds of most racing games. Real circuit driving was pioneered by Namco when they introduced Pole Position. This game was a revolutionary racing game in its time. The graphics were featured in a higher resolution and the third person perspective was used. When Pole Position 2 came out they added improvements. Players were now allowed to pick the course they were interested in racing on. Along with that feature came greater detailed graphics.

Racing simulators became all the rage starting in the early 90?s. Papyrus Design Group launched the game Indianapolis 500: The Simulation. The game was based off of the actual race track. Not only did it offer 3-D graphics you had set up options, car failures and handling issues. Sega was the first company to introduce multi-player machine linking with their Virtua Racing in 1992. If fantasy racing was more your style, Nintendo introduced the ever popular Mario Kart. The bright colors, colorful environment and recognizable characters made franchise history.

In today?s era video game companies are full speed ahead with racing game development. Racing games have become ultra realistic and competitive. Yes you can still find fun racing games like Cars the movie and Super Mario Cart to play around with. Although they now offer more of a free racing style with courses that allow racers to drive all over the course. Today the buzz has become all about Forza Motorsport 3 introduced by Turn 10 Studios exclusively for the Xbox 360. The game has over 400 cars available for players to customize and 100 plus tracks to race on. The Forza 3 tool features the ability to paint the vehicles and upgrade race cars. If you are an online racing gamer you?re even allowed to set up a store front to create car designs to sell to other players.

Gaming through the decades has defiantly come a long way. Yes customizing cars and racing against friends that live miles from you is a thrill but I still like some old school Pole Patrol. When you take a look back on history and see how far the video gaming world has come it is hard to imagine the future. With features like the Forza 3 car set up tool I can only envision what the world of video game racing will be ten years from now.