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Earlier this week, Yahoo! introduced their “7 Video Games That Changed The World” – a very poor list if you ask us, since it excludes ANY incarnation of the Super Mario Brothers, old school RPG’s and gave credence to Wii Sports. (Really?) But it’s the typical “Top Generic Number” post you see online these days, mentioning only recently popular games and suffering from extreme memory loss.

We can’t thrash Yahoo! completely, they did throw Doom and Ms. Pac Man in there. But how about some Spy Hunter, Road Rash or any of the recent GTA titles? Automopedia decided to take our “Eight 80’s Arcade Driving Games We Blew Our Allowances On” post and go a bit further, this time checking out the past three decades of driving games that changes our world.

Spy Hunter

Originally a hit arcade game (from its 1983 introduction) Spy Hunter became highly successful even on home based systems. It has since been launched on several gaming platforms and is still highly regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time. You starred as (get ready) a Spy, Hunter down your enemies and shooting out the tires on all the bad guys’ cars. Scrolling game play allowed you to weave in and out of traffic, firing at your targets before they got away.

Rad Racer

In 1987 Rad Racer came to the world via Nintendo’s classic 8-bit Entertainment System (NES). It grew into one of the platform’s most popular games, spinning off into a sequel. Rad Racer featured a Magnum PI style Ferrari blasting through exotic locales. Rad’s realistic driving game play included crashes and spin outs when your vehicle slammed into a sign, car, or other obstruction. What really stood out about Rad Racer? 3-D glasses, which came with your copy, would pop out the action from your TV.

Knight Rider

Knight Rider was such a highly successful television series (running form 1982 – 1986) that it was spun off into toys, comic books and (of course) a video game. Playing it seemed more like a first-person version of Rad Racer, but all of the Knight Industries Two-Thousand components were there on your dashboard. Gamers could fire small lasers and missiles at the vehicles they chased, Turbo Boost, acquire upgrades from Bonnie, and battle it out against Goliath and KARR. Knight Rider was also a pretty decent geography lesson – as each mission took you into a different major city in the USA.

Road Rash

Originally for the Sega Genesis 16-bit console. Road Rash starred an outlaw group of motorcyclists racing through various locations on America’s West Coast. The player could equip themselves with a chain and police baton for protection, or just for beating the shit out of an unsuspecting competitor. You could also punch and kick…but don’t swing too hard, because you can also go sliding off your bike at 150 miles per hour, hit a car in the oncoming lane, or do front-tire-first slams into a moo-cow. With every race you won there was a cash reward, which one could save up and use for motorcycle upgrades. Cut scenes between battles gave the story a little drama and background on other racers. When Road Rash 3-D came out years later on Sony’s Playstation it opened up the game play, allowing a rider to take off from the course and just cruise for hours to an alternative rock soundtrack.

Crazy Taxi

“Crrrrrraaaazzzzyyyyyyy Taxi” features a Wolfman Jack type narrator who dispatched one of four drivers, each with a unique (and classic) model cab. You’re judged on time, number of and accuracy of fares, as you troll what looks like the city of San Francisco with music from Bad Religion and The Offspring filling the air. After each round you were rewarded, depending on how well you got these crazy pedestrians to their destinations, a Class A through D license. The game was welcomed on many platforms, from arcades up through a Playstation 2 and PSP version. Many of these incarnations included real life product placement – including Pizza Hut, KFC, Tower Records and Levi.

Need for Speed / Gran Turismo Series

Both the Need for Speed series and Gran Turismo have brought gorgeous, real life race cars and realistic game play to race fans world wide. Imports and enhanced coupes rule the roads on each game. Need for Speed generally features a Road Rash type of gaming, where the driver (operating anything from a Toyota import to a Lamborghini) competes against other luxury roadsters, as well as the police, in a street race around tracks world wide. Gran Turismo, another realistic driving game, has become one of the highest grossing race games in history for systems like Playstation. Fans immerse themselves in a location where they can upgrade already elaborate cars to top speed machines. One thing each title has in common – until recently the only complaint some fans had was cars featured in both never showed structural damage after a crash. This was based on requests made by car companies which sold the rights to use their vehicle names.

Grand Theft Auto 3, and on

The GTA Series has become infamous across the world. Rockstar Games (then DMA Design) introduced the original Grand Theft Auto in 1997. In 2001 GTA: III come out on the PS2 (Playstation 2 for those not in the know) and was garnered as one of the most spectacular and advanced games of its time. For the first time a player truly had free reign. You didn’t have to stick to any specific mission, and could roam Liberty City jacking cars, picking up prostitutes and shooting old ladies for their purse money. Several successful sequels have come out of GTA, including the recent (and highly addictive in our opinion) GTA IV. None of the vehicles you steal in the game are officially licensed by any auto maker, but modeled after everything from a Mustang to a H2 and Ferrari.

Honorable Mention:

Twisted Metal

Twisted Metal may be one of the most bizarre games any of us ever played (At least on the PSOne console). It starred a dozen or so possessed drivers and their deranged vehicles. Set up like a destruction derby in hell, each vehicle would fight with guns, missiles and fire balls to be the last beast standing. This game could give you nightmares if you played at 2 am with the creepy ghost sounds of Dark Tooth slithering from your TV speakers.

Categories: Articles
Tags: crazy taxi, Features, grand theft auto, gta IV, knight rider, need for speed, racing video games, rad racer, retro games, road rash, spy hunter, twisted metal