Racing Games/Sim Racing History 101
Racing video games have always been a thing as everyone loves the thrill of speed, the ability to over drive a car and crash without the worry of injury or raised insurance premiums. Going back to the early 70s it was common place to finding racing games in any arcade. Games like Monaco GP. In the 80s racing games at the arcade really started to become popular. Pole Position and Sega Hot Rod swallowed quarter after quarter making anyone and everyone a race car driver.
While there are dozens of arcade games that could be mentioned here, Sega Hot Rod deserves some focus. This was a top down racing game but with 4 racing stations, one on each side of a table top style game. The game was basic but having 4 racers beside one another competing head to head, talking trash and driving hard it became very popular.
Prior to these games the closest a kid could come was slot cars which are fun and an important part of racing at home but they lack the control of video games. Early racing games, before home consoles were all hand held like Digital Derby and Demon Driver. Again, horrible but as young kids, these were an important part of fueling our passion for racing.
Then the Atari launched their 2600 hit with the Indy 500, Grand Prix, Pole Position and others. They were all so amazing. As racing games become more popular on the Atari they released the first home steering wheel with a trigger for the gas. This changed things big time, you felt like you were actually steering a car.
As the years rolled on games got better and better, with the first Nintendo dropping a ton of racing games came with it, most were all top down, ¾ view or behind the car racers. And then in 1990 Nintendo released Formula One; Built to Win, it was a game changer! It was the first step towards sim racing. The game included a number of features that brought the player into a deep career path. You started your career racing a Mini Cooper but a very slow one. In order to progress you had to modify and tune your car which required money, to get money you had to win races or you could visit the casino, hopefully hitting it big. Once your Mini was quick enough and you won races you progressed up a class, now racing a Vector W2 (which in 1990 was poised to be a major player though it never happened), from the Vector you moved into a Ferrari F40 then once you had proven yourself in the F40 it was into a McLaren F1 car wearing the Marlboro livery giving you dreams of racing alongside Senna. Now while Built to Win had many aspects that sim titles have today, the driving and racing were still horrible as the technology just wasn’t there yet to give the feeling of being totally immersed into the game.
Fast forward 3 years, the Sony Playstation hits with a handful of racing games, some weren’t worth the money but there were some like Ridge Racer that showed where the future of racing games were headed, towards being racing simulators. With those games home steering wheels also started to become a thing. They were basic, no feed bad, no feel but they made you feel like you were driving,
The future showed itself in 1997 with Gran Turismo. Now all of you lighting torches to burn me at the stake, but the lighters down and keep reading. In 1997 Gran Turismo was it! There were games on the PC that were just as good if not better but gaming on a PC was not readily available to everyone while the Playstation and Gran Turismo made it easy for anyone and everyone to get the first real feeling of racing at home. The title featured very in-depth car tuning, licensing and a great career mode. The AI (artificial intelligence) was as realistic as possible in 1997, driving the car, the feeling of the cars was also as realistic as you could get at the time.
With the popularity of Gran Turismo companies started making much better racing wheels with mild feedback and pedals that made at home racing even more realistic. In 1998 things got real, Fanatec released their first wheel that led to the multi-million dollar sim peripherals business today.
Jump forward to about 2008, the at home sim racing market started to really get traction thanks to a ground breaking title named iRacing. While there were other titles, lots of them on the market, iRacing came to market with a full package loaded with anything and everything a sim racer wanted. iRacing was the new standard! Since then sim racing at home has now become very serious business, there are titles like Automobilista 2 and Assetto Corsa that have and successfully challenged iRacing. These titles feature virtually unlimited immersion that are so good that professional racers and racing teams from Formula one to dirt circle track racers are using them to train, stay sharp and prepare for the next race as there are hundreds and hundreds of real world circuits of any style to run.
Then you add the things like force feedback steering wheel bases and pedals, real racing wheels, sim chassis that move and rotate (though still to a very unrealistic level), the technology today allows you to feel the lose of traction on one specific wheel. That same technology has made sim racing at home almost as good as racing in real life.
We’ve come a long way since that Atari 2600 and Indy 500, every year the in-home racing options get better, they get more intense, they get more real. What does the future hold? We can’t wait to see.