5 Kart Racers That You Forgot Were Awesome

When you think about kart racers, Mario Kart is the first game that comes to mind for most players. That said, the genre is filled with great games across tons of different platforms. Some of the most notable include Crash Team Racing, Nickelodeon Kart Racers, and Team Sonic Racing. However, those high-profile releases are just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of great kart racers lurking below the surface that many fans have completely forgotten about. Thankfully, most of them are relatively easy to play these days.

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Here are five great kart racers you probably forgot about.

5) Konami Krazy Racers

Konami Krazy Racers is a 2001 game for the Game Boy Advance. Like many popular kart racers, it draws on characters from across Konami’s long history to build its roster. That includes fan favorites like Dracula from Castlevania, Goemon from Legend of the Mystical Ninja, and Gray Fox from Metal Gear.

It’s a wild roster with a few deep cuts, but it’s the driving that made it beloved. In fact, some critics ranked it ahead of Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the GBA. I don’t know if I can quite get down with that notion, but it’s a fun racer that was easy to get for a bit on the Virtual Console for the Wii U in 2015. These days, it’s tougher to find, but not impossible.

4) Chocobo Racing

In 1999, Final Fantasy was near the peak of its powers. Square was still glowing from the worldwide success of Final Fantasy VII, and while Final Fantasy VIII didn’t perform quite as well, it was still a solid entry. The developers decided to branch out with their own kart racer, but added an important twist: Chocobos.

You’re not technically racing karts, but those Chocobos might as well be the same thing. As with any good kart racer, the cast is filled with memorable characters, including Mog the Moogle and Cid. Granted, Chocobo Racing does feel like Square trying to cash in on the success of Mario Kart 64, but it’s a solid racer that Final Fantasy fans will love. The developer tried to go back to the well in 2022 with Chocobo GP, but missed the mark with heavy monetisation.

3) Wacky Wheels

Developer Beavis Soft saw the success of the Super Nintendo version of Mario Kart and decided the PC needed its own brand of kart racer. You control one of several animals as they race around the track, using bombs and hedgehogs to knock your opponents off track.

It has basically everything you’d want, including multiplayer action via split-screen, modem, or direct serial link. Heck, there’s even a replication of Battle Mode from Super Mario Kart. Wacky Wheels is still relatively easy to get your hands on. It was re-released on GOG and Steam in the mid 2010s as part of the 3D Realms Anthology. Just make sure you don’t accidentally end up with Wacky Wheels HD, which is a bad update of the classic racer.

2) ModNation Racers

In 2010, United Front Games and San Diego Studio partnered to make ModNation Racers for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3. It’s a classic kart racer that takes the player-created levels fans loved in LittleBigPlanet, and adds those mechanics to the racing world.

With that in mind, there were nearly limitless racing options in ModNation Racers. Those servers closed in 2018, but it’s still a great racer to dive into. After all, you might not be able to download maps from other players, but you can still create your own levels and play them to your heart’s content. There was a sequel called Road Trip on the PlayStation Vita. Unfortunately, it was not nearly as successful, and San Diego Studios has put its full focus on MLB The Show these days.

1) Speed Freaks

Speed Freaks (called Speed Punks in North America) is a PlayStation game from the team at Funcom. Compared to some of the other games on this list, it has a relatively limited cast of characters, with just nine different racers to pick from. That said, there’s enough variety in how those karts handle that you won’t really notice the lack of characters.

Otherwise, Speed Freaks is a standard kart racer. It feels great on the track, but the developers weren’t doing much new in the modes department. You have tournaments, single races, and a few multiplayer options. Speed Freaks makes the list because it’s a rock-solid racer that gave fans of the original PlayStation something to play that mostly lived up to Mario Kart 64. Granted, it’s not as beloved (or even as good) as that all-time classic, but if you didn’t have a Nintendo 64, you needed options, and Speed Freaks was about as good as it got for PlayStation fans during the era.

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