Originally posted by pupik
History lesson:
The first arcade game for racing cars was F-1. It debuted in 1974 with a video image of a car you steered left and right against a rolling background that had other impediments that you steered around.
In 1977, circuit racing improved with "Indy 500", except the course was not oval, it was more of a road circuit. The layout looked a lot like "Super Sprint", which came out about 10 years later. The Indy 500 game was black and white.
For home use, the Atari 2600 had "Night driver", you moved the road, not the car (it was in fact, motionless!) with a left-right motion paddle. The Indy 500 game was available for Atari, and it came with its own specially-designed controllers.
Coleco came out with "Turbo", and you just moved the car left and right from a blimp's-eye view. Pole Position debuted in 1982, and it was really the first racing game with any sort of feeling to it. Sure, you exploded by merely touching wheels or crashing into billboards, but you could steer a little or a lot, shift between two gears, and "qwalwify" for a grid of eight cars. (Funny how it has 8 cars, the GT series has 6.)
Variations upon the theme arrived over the next couple of years, mainly by Atari. Pole Position II (chose between 4 tracks) in 1983, FX-1 with 3 screens (!) in 1984, and a great game called "Final Lap" in 1987. You could actually spin the car because you had to make delicate steering inputs in to the car. You could really oversteer the car over the curbs which was really fun at times. The track was Suzuka, and the best machinery of 1987's F1 trail was in the game.
The "paddle-shifter" which was introduced by Ferrari in 1989, was emulated by Sega in "Super Monaco GP" later that year. (There was a Monaco GP in 1980, but it was no better than "Turbo"). This game had a unique rendition of Monaco (elements of the famous circuit, but not the real thing), and seven speeds. The game featured qualifying on a "short-circuit" and if you placed in the top 3 of the first race, you competed in a wet race after wards. This game was maddeningly difficult, but so much fun to play. The cars looked like real F1 cars (with paintjobs, and all), and you had to stay in a certain place in order to keep playing. You could crash out of the event, and punt other cars into the harbor every so often! The caveat is that most times I plaed this game, the shfter was broken!!!
Another neat game was Konami's WEC Le Mans, you sat in a sports-car looking device that moved around when you drove around a track that was very much like la Sarthe, and you had to keep up with checkpoints and the sky would change color from light to night and back again over the course of 4 laps. The steering wheel had "force-feedback"; if you ran over a curb or spun, you'd feel it though the wheel.
Sega took the lead with driving simulators, but most home-gaming systems had poor renditions of their arcade brothers. Nintendo had Mario Kart and RC Pro-Am, proving that it couldn't make real car games and just pandered to kids who were years away from legally driving real cars. Sega followed it up with F1 Exhaust Note, and later, VR Virtua Racing. NASCAR's popularity spawned Daytona...you could race 8 other players, and after the race, a voice told you to "get out your seat".
Home gaming consoles improved vastly around 1994, and this is where racing games took off. The PC did too, with games like Test Drive and various others. Even Microsoft tried a few racing games. Anyone want to take wheel from here?