Favorite Kart Racing Games
Date : 2025-10-06 Entry ID : 17466 Entry type : analysis Game : Team Sonic Racing (@3636)
I've been playing a bunch of kart racers recently, and thinking about which is my favorite kart racer.
Favorite Kart Racing Games
These are an unordered list of my favorite kart racing games. I beat all championships and tried all modes in Mario Kart World and almost everything in Hot Wheels Unleashed. I didn't finish Team Sonic Racing, but played enough to know that I enjoy it.
Mario Kart World was a day 1 release for the Switch 2. It's a very polished game with fun levels, a lot of great expressive characters and varied vehicles to unlock, beautiful graphics and great sound. I'm missing some features to keep me around after finishing it, but the time I spent with it was very enjoyable.
Frame rate : Stable 60 FPS Split screen : 2-player splitscreen, and 30 FPS 4-player splitscreen Campaign mode: none
Hot Wheels Unleashed has an amazing selection of toy cars (which stand in for the characters in the mascot racers) and it plays incredibly well with a great drift/boost mechanic.
Frame rate : 60 FPS Split screen : 2-player splitscreen Campaign mode: A graph where each node is a race challenge against AI drivers or a time attack.
Team Sonic Racing plays really well, and has a great cast of classic characters, although it's somewhat smaller than MKW. The game looks great and runs well. Playing splitscreen mode is enhanced with the option of playing in a team, adding a layer of strategy to the championship scoring, as well as extra race features such as giving power-ups to your team mates, boosting your vehicle by driving in team mates tracks ('slingshotting'), and simultaneously activating boost mode to make for extra long boosts.
Frame rate : 60 FPS Split screen : 2-player splitscreen Campaign mode: A structured progression of mini-championships.
Other Kart Racing Games
LEGO 2K Drive feels like a modern incarnation of PlayStation game LEGO Racers from 1999. It looks good, and runs well, and allows you to build your own vehicles from scratch and try other players' creations. This is the most powerful feature in the game, but the racing itself feels a little bit less exciting than the other kart racers.
Crash Team Racing - Nitro Fueled is a remake of the PlayStation game Crash Team Racing from 1999. It's too slow to load and doesn't look as good as the other games.
The Wipeout Omega Collection crafts look cool, but have less character than the mascot racers or the Hot Wheels. The hover races feel different, but most of the gameplay is much like the other kart racers.
Wipeout 2097 was an incredibly cool PlayStation game in 1996 with a fantastic soundtrack and visual style. However, the game runs at 30 FPS, it lacks a splitscreen option and on the fastest tracks, the game is one of the few that gives me motion sickness.
Rollcage was very similar to Wipeout, except you would drive actual cars. It had a similarly awesome soundtrack, but ran at 30 FPS at the most, sometimes less. It did have splitscreen support and it felt great to race upside down through futuristic tunnels.