Seven racing game franchises that need to return

Words: Thomas Harrison-Lord, Martin Bigg, Ross McGregor, John Munro and Justin Towell.

Tentpole franchises like Gran Turismo, Forza Horizon and Assetto Corsa continue to dominate the racing game landscape. But so many once-revered franchises have vanished over the years.

From gritty Fast and Furious-inspired street racers to futuristic anti-gravity games, we were once treated to a plethora of racing IPs with unique ideas.

With that in mind, we think the time is right for these seven racing game franchises to make an overdue return.

To clarify, this list only focuses on racing franchises with more than one entry.

Burnout

Let’s start with one of the most beloved modern arcade racers, and yet also a series that has remained dormant for the best part of 15 years: Burnout.

Inspired by Konami’s Thrill Drive arcade series, the original Burnout was a checkpoint-based street racer that rewarded reckless driving. Near misses with traffic and drifting around corners filled up a boost meter. Once filled, you could activate a ‘burnout,’ daring you to dodge traffic at crazy speeds without crashing.  

The fan-favourite crash mode didn’t arrive until Burnout 2: Point of Impact, and then, for the third instalment, Electronic Arts acquired the publishing rights. It emphasised ramming opponents, resulting in bombastic crashes. The visuals were a noticeable leap forward, accompanied by a licensed soundtrack featuring early 2000s pop-punk.

Many fans regard Burnout 3 or the open-world Burnout Paradise as the franchise’s peak. While the latter received a remaster and a Switch port, the last all-new entry was Burnout Crash! In 2011, a forgotten mobile spin-off that put the Crash mode at the forefront.   

EA abandoned Burnout in favour of Need for Speed, with Criterion developing Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted and, more recently, Unbound. Hot Pursuit, in particular, felt like EA trying to take the essence of Paradise and speed dating it with the more-established franchise, but as Need for Speed moved away from the takedown-style crashes, it left a Burnout-shaped hole.

Meanwhile, original series creators Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry went on to form Three Fields Entertainment and create Dangerous Driving, a circuit-based spiritual successor to Burnout 3. But with a much smaller team helming the project, it lacked Burnout’s production values, with limited damage modelling and unpredictable car handling.

Three Fields is currently working on Wreckreation, formerly Dangerous Driving 2, which is shaping up to be an ambitious open-world driving game, inviting comparisons to Burnout Paradise.

As for the original Burnout series, EA hasn’t acknowledged the series’ existence since Paradise Remastered, but there’s still hope. It’s believed that Stellar Entertainment, creators of the remaster, is working on an unannounced AAA arcade racer in Unreal Engine 5. Last year, social media teasers alluded to crashes and takedowns – could this be hinting at a belated Burnout sequel? Time will tell.

WipEout

Another franchise that has a similar freneticism, but in a completely different setting, is WipEout.

Futuristic racers used to be a popular racing sub-genre – think F-Zero and Extreme G, but they’ve been wiped out (pun intended) from the mainstream of late, relying on indie releases such as Pacer and RedOut. 

In the mid-1990s, WipEout was one of the PlayStation’s defining launch titles in Europe. Created by Sony’s Psygnosis studio, it was a vision of what Formula 1 could look like in the year 2052, with anti-gravity ships replacing cars, a distinct visual style helmed by The Designers Republic and a memorable soundtrack from techno artists like The Chemical Brothers and CoLD SToRAGE.

It ushered in a new era of 3D anti-gravity racers thanks to jaw-dropping graphics and an insane sense of speed.

The Designers Republic would work on the first three WipEout titles for the original PlayStation, before the series made its PlayStation 2 debut with WipEout Fusion. This was followed by WipeOut HD on the PlayStation 3 and several portable spin-off titles.

PlayStation Vita launch title WipeOut 2048 was a particular highlight, but marked the last new console entry. The WipEout Omega Collection on PS4 was a compilation of 2048 and the PS3 game, also marking the sad demise of its developer, Studio Liverpool.

It’s been over a decade since we’ve had a proper new instalment, excluding the ephemeral WipEout Merge mobile spin-off. The series is an important part of PlayStation history and deserves a comeback, especially considering that Gran Turismo is now Sony’s sole racing series.

Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix

While that’s two outlandish racing games covered, we’re not forgetting simulations, either. We think there’s space for a modern-day interpretation of Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix in today’s marketplace.

EA and Codemasters’ F1 games are entertaining enough, of course, but hardcore sim racers often have to turn to third-party Assetto Corsa PC mods or fictional formula cars in Automobilista 2, RaceRoom and rFactor 2 for a truly immersive experience.

Not since the days of Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix series have we had a ‘proper’ F1 simulator, with the English developer’s final game, Grand Prix 4, arriving way back in 2002.

Attention to detail sets these apart. Each car model was distinct, reflecting the varying development paths of the real-world teams. Fully manual pitstops with an animated pit crew were possible too, with the sim outputting telemetry to aid set-up decisions.

Crammond’s first serious take on F1, 1991’s Microprose Formula One Grand Prix, introduced wet weather to the sim racing world. By 2000, Grand Prix 3 featured drying racing lines, a feature missing from some sims even today.

GP4 simulated the 2001 F1 season, and just like real life, McLarens were more likely to detonate their engines than Ferraris (a marshal would push your hobbled car off the track as well!). Car setup options and tutorials had input from Mark Hemsworth, then team manager of the Arrows F1 team. Although tracks weren’t laser-scanned, all 17 circuits from the championship were recreated using GPS data and were no less realistic as a result.

That final entry even had that official FIA intro, the soundtrack to many an F1 fan’s weekend, further enveloping players in the world of F1.

Crammond’s F1 games moved the bar for racing sims, and the fact that GP4 is still enjoyed by a passionate community of fans and modders today is testament to that. It also shows that there’s a clear demand for a sim-focused F1 title.

But can anyone afford to do it? Well, that’s a different matter altogether.

Project Gotham Racing

Microsoft definitely could, reporting $27.2 billion in profit for the last quarter alone. It won’t, though; the chances of that happening are about as realistic as another Daft Punk world tour.

Still, in an age when it seems to have doubled down on Forza Horizon by jettisoning all other driving titles, we can’t help but think now is a perfect time for it to invest in another racing game series – Project Gotham Racing.

Strangely, it originates from Sega’s last home console. The Dreamcast arrived at the turn of the century, and once people had realised that the Millennium Bug didn’t threaten humanity, Bizarre Creations created Metropolis Street Racer. A beguiling racer, the rug was pulled from beneath it when Sony’s PS2 began to dominate.

Thankfully, Microsoft was about to enter the console market and picked up several SEGA talents to create the first Xbox. This included the Metropolis Street Racer team, who created a spiritual successor called Project Gotham Racing.

It carried across the vibe of city streets and the Kudos points system, dished out for exuberant driving and reminds us that a more simplistic racing game is sadly lacking in 2025.

For example, the cover car is the Ferrari F50, and your goal is to simply unlock that model. There isn’t a main ‘career mode’ as such, but instead disparate modes of hot lap, one-on-one, street race and style challenge. Complete an event, unlock the next event and a car and so on. Hardly mould-breaking, but the allure of the top car is enough to power you through.

Over the next six years, Microsoft funded three further sequels, each revered in its own right, adding in circuits like the Nürburgring Nordschleife, motorcycles, online multiplayer and dynamic weather.

There were even three mobile spin-offs, including the wildly successful version for the Zune HD. Oh, wait, sorry, we didn’t mean wildly successful, but rather utter and complete failure. R.I.P. Zune.

Throughout this time, Bizarre was not owned by Microsoft, leaving a window for an acquisition by someone else, and in 2007, Activision did just that. It meant the development team was separated from the PGR franchise.

It went on to make Blur, another fun racing game, this time with Mario Kart-style power-ups, and James Bond 007: Blood Stone. These failed to sell enough units to satisfy its owners, and the studio was shut down while creating a stillborn Blur sequel.

However, the PGR moniker is thought to still be under the ownership of Microsoft, just ready to be redeployed at any minute. Or, you know, just sit on and do nothing about it. Sigh.

SEGA Rally

Rally games. We can’t get enough of them at Traxion. Literally. There just aren’t enough of them around these days, especially in light of the recent Codemasters rally team closure.

With new official WRC games on the way, but not until 2027, there’s a noticeable gap left in the more accessible time-based virtual rally genre.

Anticipated indie game Super Woden Rally Edge should fill that gap nicely – but what about a large studio making a more friendly rally title? Think EA’s Shox, the V-Rally series or the more accessible of the DIRT entries? They all seem to have completely vanished.

And that’s why we think it’s time for the garlanded SEGA Rally series to return.

Nostalgic memories of desperately trying to complete SEGA Rally 2 at a British coastal town aside, we think a revival would have to move with the times a little.

This is what the overlooked Sega Rally Revo (sold simply as ‘Sega Rally’ in Europe, just to confuse everyone) tried in the aughts. It added fresh environments, online multiplayer and terrain deformation to the mix.

‘Revo’ is considered a mainline series entry, but isn’t the same as Sega Rally 3 – again, just to be extra confusing. That was only for arcade cabinets, and took the Revo base, stripped away some of the visual tricks and made the handling more free-flowing.

And just to really muddy the waters even more, Sega Rally 3 in turn was ported to consoles as a download-only title called Sega Rally Online Arcade.

But let’s not get too bogged down in the confusing release strategy. This era of Sega Rally is criminally underrated thanks to an underlying sense of checkpoint-based fun. Sadly, sales numbers didn’t meet expectations, and Revo’s Sega Racing Studio development team was shuttered before being subsumed by Codemasters.

However, there are signs that the Sonic steward is returning to the racing fold. Later this year, it will launch Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, it has confirmed a remake of Crazy Taxi and there’s even set to be an Outrun movie by Michael Bay and Sydney Sweeney. SEGA Rally would fit right in.

Midnight Club

Fans have wanted Midnight Club to return since its last volume on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2009, but it arguably makes perfect sense for it to come back now. Why?

Well, consider this: Midnight Club Los Angeles used the Grand Theft Auto IV game engine to deliver a sort of GTA-lite – a street racer with all the convincing hustle and bustle of a GTA city, only without the violence.

The streets have pedestrians on the sidewalks and seafront promenade, all of whom jump out of the way, Crazy Taxi-style, as you hurtle towards them. It may be sanitised. But that’s preferable to having ‘day after the rapture’ style empty streets, as is now normal in games like CarX Street and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown.

So just imagine what kind of Midnight Club game Rockstar could make with the GTA 6 engine, keeping that living, breathing game world we’ve seen in its trailers. Even as a PS2 launch game, the original Midnight Club embraced the arcade sensibilities of the 1990s, while adding now-standard modern features like an open city to drive around.

The series always kept hold of its larger-than-life approach to driving, incorporating power-up icons hovering above the road, rival racers shouting goading soundbites at you like games did in the golden days of Destruction Derby, yet, by the third, still allowed you to race and mod real-world cars.

That’s only possible in a teen or 12-rated game, because car manufacturers don’t want us using their real vehicles as virtual weapons. So in a world where you have to choose between sporadic driving in the adult-rated GTA 6, or a neutered open world driving game as we’ve seen too many times in recent years, Midnight Club would occupy that elusive middle ground. Feeling edgy and dangerous without ever going too far, and adding arcadey elements that just wouldn’t fit the GTA universe.

There’s a whole generation of gamers who grew up playing Midnight Club and Need For Speed Underground who still long for a living city to race around at night, the streets slick with rain and the lights reflected in the tarmac. Again, imagine how good that could be in GTA 6’s engine. Yep, now you’re getting it. Surely, surely, Rockstar is ready for a fan-pleasing palette cleanser? We can but hope.

Need for Speed Underground

Midnight Club isn’t the biggest street racing dynasty under house arrest. The aforementioned Need For Speed franchise has been reinventing itself for decades in the hope of staying relevant, but after what has felt like an identity crisis, Electronic Arts has paused the series, with the Criterion development team drafted in to help with Battlefield 6.

2022’s Need For Speed Unbound should be the final chapter, with EA hinting that the franchise will eventually return in “new and interesting ways.”

That’s all well and good, but attempts at “new and interesting” haven’t necessarily proved fruitful recently. Why not consider an alternative strategy?

The original Need For Speed Underground launched in 2003 at the height of 2 Fast 2 Furious mania. Street racing was king, and Black Box Games nailed the brief with Underground, capitalising on its popularity. The dark Olympic City streets provided the perfect canvas for a thumping soundtrack, neon underglow and souped-up imports, tearing through parks and intersections at what felt like the speed of light. Only once you had earned those upgrades, though, and you were going to have to work for them.

Car customisation was a key element, something that would be built on for the sequel merely a year later. Underground 2 retained the atmosphere, the story-based career mode and the car customisation-fuelled progression, but this time around, it moved to a new open-world Bayview location.

There was no police presence in either Underground title, but so many other core Need for Speed personality traits can be traced back to here. It felt like the antithesis of the Gran Turismo franchise, the rebellious PS2 platform sibling who didn’t conform. 

Some may argue that 2015’s Need For Speed reboot was a spiritual successor of sorts, but it flattered to deceive. If EA is brave, in an era where certain other street racing titles are emerging from the shadows, an actual Underground 3 could garner the sort of excitement to sell copies by the million.

Which racing franchises would you like to see return? Let us know in the comments below.