I really liked Midnight Club back on the PS2. Would be cool to find similar for the Deck.
Any racing games that the community finds good on the Deck? Is it arcadey or realistic in the mechanics?
I wonder if Star Wars Racer would work
If you are a fan of F-zero, check out Areo GPX. Very arcadey.
The following recommendations are not Midnight Club like racers but take a look at anti grav racing.
- Redout 1 & 2
- BallisticNG
For fun, arcadey action woden gp is good.
Art of rally is fun. Tokyo xtreme racer just released and aparrently is starting to look real good on deck.
Burnout Paradise runs flawlessly and has yet to be bested in the arcade racing genre (except maybe by Full Auto but that’s not available on PC)
Outrun 2006: Coast to Coast is a perennial favorite of mine. Plays fantastic on the Deck!
Forza motosport 4 work nice but is hard on the battery maybe 2 hours
NFS Most Wanted, the original, is fantastic, though it requires manual installation as it’s not on Steam.
Sadly the redux modpack version is just a bit too heavy as it includes a bunch of shaders and stuff you can’t disable. It runs, but you get maybe two hours. Vanilla barely taxes the deck.
I’ve been playing nfsmw on the ps2 emulator. Runs great
Trackmania is free to play*, but requires a ubisoft account. Arcade time trial.
Campaign last 3 months. First 10 maps are free. Whole capaign is behind a pay wall.
I’ve got quite a lot of racing games - though I tend to only use the Steam Deck for the 3rd person arcade-like fun ones. I prefer realistic sims on a wheel & pedals setup.
Anyway, there’s probably some repeats on here, but these are all ones I have played on Steam Deck and felt worked well.
- RXC - Rally Cross Challenge (top down 3d Rally cross, arcadey but with semi-realistic handling)
- Horizon Chase Turbo (90s style rear-view arcade racer. Think “Outrun” or “Lotus Elite Turbo Challenge” etc)
- Art of Rally (already mentioned)
- Wreckfest (already mentioned)
- Descenders (downhill BMX bike racing)
- Rush Rally 3 (rear view 3d semi-realistic arcadey rally)
- Rush Rally Origins (3d top down semi-realistic arcadey rally)
Speed Dreams!
I play Gran Turismo 7 on my steam deck via Chiaki. Wish they wud release on steam but for now this works.
I like good ol’ OutRun on my Switch. It’s the definition of an arcade race. For the Steam Deck it seems like you have to go through emulators for this.
I’ve enjoyed Hot Wheels Unleashed, 1 & 2. Super-super-arcadey.
There was NFS game on sale for like 2 bucks during the winter sale that was fun.
But I think Art Of Rally really shines as a steam deck racing game. It’s not arcadey, but not hardcore sim. Kind of it’s own challenging but chill racer. Can easily be played in short bursts when you have 5 or 10 minutes to kill.
