Over the last few years I have started to watch more motor sports racing.  It started with watching some AMA Supercross and then Lucas Motor Oil Motocross right after that a few years back.  Then this year I just happened to be off when the NASCAR Daytona 500 was going on so I watched that and enjoyed it.  Then I remembered how back in the early 2000's my friends and I were all into sporty cars due to The Fast and the Furious coming out.  When I really look back on my life, I have always enjoyed racing games in some form.  So after reflecting on all of that, I decided to do a top ten list of my favorite racing games from the 80's and 90's

As with all of my lists, these are my favorite games from this time period that I have played.  There were a lot of racing games that came out during this time and I haven't even come close to playing all of them.  This list is going to focus on games that came out for the NES, SNES, Playstation 1 and PC since those are systems I had at the time.

10.  Destruction Derby (PC, Playstation 1, 1995)

I remember my brother and I downloading the PC demo for this game when we first got access to the internet. The game has a few different racing options to choice from.  The big draw of the game is that you could actively smash into other cars which would cause damage to you and them.  Damage affects how the cars drive and after enough damage you or your opponents get taken out of the race.  While I didn't spend a whole lot of time with this game, I had fun with it. (PC Version Pictured)

9.  Rad Racer (NES, 1987)

This game was a early NES game but it still was fun to play.  This is more of a arcade racing game where you are racing around different tracks while avoiding other cars that are in your way.  Going off the road means you might crash into a sign or tree which would send you car flying into the air.  If you didn't make it to the next checkpoint on the stage before the timer runs out you lost.  The game also had some decent music.

8.  Bigfoot (1990)

I'm not going to sit hear and imagine this game is good.  However, I used to play this my best friend and my brother so i have a lot of good memories with this game.  The game is broken into a top down racing game and the other parts are more about the monster trucks themselves using a side view.  You have a hill climb event, a car crunching event, a mud run and a pulling event.  The real fun part of the game was seeing how many times you could get the computer to forfeit from running out of money and having it replaced with a new colored monster truck. 

7.  R.C. Pro-Am (NES, 1988)

I always found this game to be hard.  You race around different tracks collecting power-ups and weapons all while trying to get first place in each race.  Once you got far enough, you upgraded to faster vehicles.  The game looked decent and the menu music wasn't bad.  My brother was always better at this game then I was and even he never got far enough to beat this game.

6.  Excitebike (NES, 1985)

This game isn't graphically impressive but it is fun to play.  The game's big draw was that it had a level maker built into the game that let your own tracks.  My brother and I spent a lot of time making tracks and then taking turns racing on our creations.  It was funny to see all the A.I. players just crash all over the place since our tracks were usually crazy.  The game also had a neat mechanic where you had to watch your engine temperature or else you would overheat and have to sit for a few seconds.

5.  F-Zero (SNES, 1990)

This game looks great, sounds great and plays great.  While I did play it a lot back when it was a current game, I haven't touched this game in years.  You race around different tracks while trying to avoid smashing into the wall and in some cases flying off the map.  You get to pick between four different cars which all seemed to  handle the same but had slightly stats.  After getting the screenshots for this game I now want to go back and play this one some more.

4.  Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992)

This game is a classic.  You get to take characters from the Super Mario Bros series (Plus Donkey Kong) and race around in go karts.  The game also had power-ups on the tracks that let you slow down you opponents.  I also liked how when playing single player the bottom part of the screen showed you where all of the other racers where at.  This game was the start of a successful franchise for Nintendo.

3.  NASCAR Racing (Playstation 1 1996, PC 1994)

My best friend had this game and my brother and I had a blast with it.  For the time the game was really well done with the graphics and how it handled.  However, we spent more time going backwards on the track to see how much mayhem we could cause smashing into other cars.  The game had a really good replay feature that let you pick different angles and vehicles to focus on so  when you did crash you could see all the car pieces fly all over the track.  I have a lot of great memories with this game. (PC version pictured)

2.  Carmageddon (PC, 1997)

This game was crazy when it came out.  You could win each race three different ways.  First you could actually race and win that way.  Second you could take out all the other opponents which is what I usually did.  Lastly, you could run over all the pedestrians  on the stage which was just a crazy thing to do.  While some games had vehicle combat as a secondary thing to do in the game, this was the primary goal of this game.  This game spawned a decent franchise of games.

1.  Road Rash (Playstation 1, PC 1996)

I played this game a lot back i the late 90's.  While I never beat the game, I got pretty close to the end.  Besides the racing part of the game, you could also kick and use weapons on other opponents.  The game also had a pretty good soundtrack with some bands I started to follow after I started playing this game.  This game also had a few sequels after this one.

NOTE:  I was unable to get screenshots of Road Rash.  For some reason, I couldn't get the PC game to work and my capture card wouldn't recognize my Playstation 2.  If I can get this fixed in the future I will upload screenshots then.