15 Essential DOS Driving Games 

I would have also included one of Papyrus’ brilliant NASCAR and Indycar racing games as well as Geoff Crammond’s Formula One Grand Prix. They’re definitely a bit dated but they have overall aged quite well and are still competent simulators to this day, chunky graphics aside.

Death Rally and Death Track were two that I played during those DOS days. The Amiga 500 also had Supercars and Supercars II which consumed a lot of my time.

Stunts! It amazes me that this idea hasn't been modernized. It would be ridiculously addicting.

I LOVED Screamer back in the day. Nice to see it included here.

Thanks for including Stunts on this list!! I spent countless hours on it, love that game!! Let's not forget the first Need for Speed game, which was a DOS game! Nascar and IndyCar racing are gems too!

I love Need for Speed: Special Edition, that one is a really fun driving/racing game for DOS.

Carmageddon was originally going to be a licensed game of the 1975 movie Death Race 2000. They lost the license but kept the key aspects from the movie, such as getting scores from running over pedestrians. Infact, Max Damage's car Eagle is modeled to look very similar to the movies protagonist Frankensteins car, Alligator.

I would add to the list DEATH TRACK, which is one of the first racing cars with weapons involved, not only you can upgrade your car (as in Street Rod saga) but also add weapons like machine guns, missiles and laser, etc. Before each track, a mafia guy approaches you and offers you extra $$$ to eliminate one of the racers.........I still remember the intro music, with its semitone bass note!

You missed: Accolade's Grand Prix Unlimited, which was a phenomenal game for its time, and Crazy Cars 3 (Also knows as Lambourghini American Challenge) which was also a great game, and for its time, had outstanding graphics.

Some absolute bangers here Pete! This vid really put me on spot with fantastic memories from back in the day!Fortunately a lot of these I’ve had the pleasure to play although I never seen ‘screamer’ so thank you for this recommendation bud!

OH MY... Dude... THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS UPLOAD. I have been looking for a game on this list for absolute DECADES. (fatal racing) I first played it from a PC Gamer Demo disk in the 90s, I always wanted to buy it but never got the chance to. The Image of the corkscrew jumps with yellow markings on the floor has been burned into my memory ever since, and when I described it to my friends an asked if they could remember the game when explaining it to them, they had no idea. I specifically clicked on this video for the very reason (and 100's of others) in the HOPE one day someone would show it...... And you just did. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG I have had that image in my head from the day I played it as a child and thought id never find it again. Im laying here in bed typing you this message with a tear in my eye. Thank you.

Unpopular Opinion: Hi-Octane is better than Wipeout. You have more freedom as the track width varies and you can even explore off track. The constant weaponry makes for very exciting carnage. I thoroughly recommend finding the patched update as it adds more tracks and game modes.

Ignition by UDS is such a gem. So many fond memories of that one and I loved that you could just put the game CD in your sound system and play the music!

Nice one. I remember the Indy 500 game fondly (not on this list), it was like a rustic Grand Prix. I sucked at it, but enjoyed crashing early and then going in the wrong direction crashing other cars. The car destruction features were great for its time.

The games are very well explained and you can watch them for a long time. Other youtubers show the games in a few seconds and there is no time to see anything about how the game is. I loved your video!

I played so many of these games as a kid and sank SO MUCH time in Street Rod. I'm going to have to revisit some of these classics soon.

I got my first pentium 100 pc in 1995 and one of the first racing game I tried was Screamer. I was blown away by the speed and depth. Coming from the Amiga, textured mapped 3D games left me gobsmacked.

Great list! Will definitely check some of these out! Love the look of the two ridge racer inspired games! Ones I remember playing a lot as a Kid were Interstate 76 and Rally Championships X Miles.

I just found your video in my recommended Feed and I would like to say this: Thank you soo much for this video! Seeing all of those games again after all these years was amazing and brought back some great memories. I always loved racing games and I indeed grew up playing all of those games and spend way too many hours playing all of them growing up.

Love these MS DOS videos!... I used to play these games when I was growing up at my Auntie and Uncles on his PC.... Carmageddon was class! Quarantine literally is doom/quake in a car!... awesome stuff as always Pete!

Screamer was way ahead of its time, it's still looks great today

My favorite DOS racing games was: - Lotus III - Ultimate Challenge (Gremlin Graphics Software, 1992), the smooth gameplay, the wonderfull selectable 6-tracks FM-music, this game was awesome for a low budget computers (386SX) - F1 (Domark, 1993), this game has awesome graphics and nice sound FX, the sense of speed was really great. - Skunny Kart (Copysoft, 1994), the clone of Wacky Wheels, this game "made" by Copysoft, has an interesting story, the creator of Whacky Wheels showed this game in the Copysoft HQ, they didn't liked and flush the poor guy, he leave the HQ... without his demo disk and source code!

This is right up my alley! Played them all back in the day and many are amongst my favorite of all time! Thanks for this! It was a great watch ;)

Genuinely, a great list of games that I played and enjoyed growing up... thank you

Absolutely fantastic selection, particularly regarding "Screamer", "Street Rod" and "Wacky Wheels". 👏🏻👏🏻💪🏻💪🏻 I'd only add "Lotus III" to the list.

You forgot about one very important game 😎 Road & Track present The Need for Speed. Great video as always 👍, I nearly play all games from your list apart of the last one 4x4🤔. Thanks to You I just reminded Fatal Racing 😁 what a great graphic shame my PC was to low spec 486😐.

I came for an old favourite 'Street Rod' and wasn't disappointed. Man, that game brings back memories. One other title that I loved was Top Gear 3000

When i got my Monster 3dfx video card, i downloaded the 3dfx dos driver for Carmageddon using a 56k modem. It was glorious to see.

Street Rod desperately needs a remake! The game could get more story, different era's of cars, more options to customise your cars. You could make it a true celebration of car culture all over the world today. Something that just wasn't possible when it came out.

I love retro arcade racers so this video was a treat!

A driving games list with Stunts, Screamer, Street Rod and Test Drive 2 can't fail. Cheers!

Nostalgic kick in the face with Super Offroad for me. Brilliant little game which kept me playing for hours!

Network Q, Screamer Rally, Wipeout, Xcar, The Need for Speed, lots of good DOS Driving games

Nice list, lots of nostalgia! For those who seek similar games to this, check out the following DOS driving games; - Big Red Racing (1995) - Slicks 'n Slide (1997)

Never forget Street Rod 1989. Me and my brother had this game and played it for hours on end. Thank you of reminding me of this gem.

Staggering to observe the evolution on gaming graphics on those 6 years between 1989 to 1995

thanks for the great list! Lots of old favorites. I would mention Indianapolis 500 which had the replay option to see crashes and whatnot from different views. Very fun at the time

Screamer was a game that floored me with it's graphics when I saw it in a magazine for the first time. Sadly I never played it.

Maaaaan, I spent years searching for the name of the game "Ignition". Thank you very much to make this video!!! I feel very nostalgic

Whacky Wheels! Im 40 and this is some real nostalgia man!

I'd say Moto Racer was a great arcadey game for PC at the time too, only ever had the demo of it as a kid, but I played the absolute hell out of it.

Ignition was such a great game, AI balance was great and each car had its individual characteristics. Must've poured 50+ hours into it as a kid!

you don't know how much this means to me. i was going crazy looking for the name of a game i played during my childhood. and it was Ignition. thank you a lot.

So many good memories in this list. I played nearly all of them, Stunts (4D Sports Driving) must be the first racing game I ever played on a PC. My favorites in this list are Carmageddon, Stunts, GTA and Fatal Racing. Some of them I had forgotten about, like Screamer, Quarantine, Wacky Wheels and Super Off Road. I guess I need to look into these games again and see which ones I can get running again to complete the trip down memory lane!

Happy to see _Screamer_ here. Didn't grow up with it, but it's arcadey good looks definitely caught my eye on GOG recently. Far as I can tell, it only uses keyboard which _is_ pretty disappointing, but beyond that it seems awesome. They really did do a bang-up job bringing the spirit of the arcade to PC with that one! Wish _Whiplash/Fatal Racing_ had a GOG release... There's so much interesting looking stuff on this list, though it kinda makes me wanna check out current iterations of some of these ideas instead of the originals. _Carmageddon Max Damage_ instead of revisiting the original game, for instance, or finally picking up something like _Wreckfest_ instead of dusting off my copy of _Destruction Derby 64,_ or _Trackmania Turbo_ instead of _Stunts/4D Sports Driving._ I know there's a current-gen _Micro Machines_ too (as well as the unlicensed _Toybox Turbos),_ but I just don't care for that. Really hate top-down camera racers; that's just not a practical angle when it comes to being playable. I assume that's why there's a vocal group of people who dislike the original _Grand Theft Auto_ too. Maybe I'll check out _Table Top Racing World Tour_ instead. Thanks for showing off so many cool things! Vids like this always get me thinking about a lot of games to hunt down, either proper retro or newer-but-obscure titles :)

i love Carmageddon! me volaba la cabeza en su época, ver las dimensiones de los mapeados casi un mundo abierto diferente cada pista! :o! comparado con las cosas que hacían las consolas de la época, estaba años luz de distancia!

I always enjoy your content man, keep up the good work

Great video! A lot of these games on the list we played on our P166 and we remember always having the shareware version of wacky wheels. Screamer 2 was also a good game but Streamer 1 looks quite impressive. We used to play Grand Prix 2 as an online multiplayer via TCP/IP Thanks for putting some other games on our radar which we know we will enjoy too

First game on the list: Carmageddon Yes!! Second game on the list: Stunts Yyyyeeeeesss! Spot on!! The two racing games I've played the crap out of it back in those days!! I paused the video just to comment this, gonna watch the rest of it now lol

Really surprised the 1989 Papyrus game Indianapolis 500 wasn't included, although that one was more a highly accurate (for the time) simulator than an arcade racer.

Screamer was awesome, it also had a feature where you were able to access an “in car stereo” where you could pause the game and play your own cds whilst driving, oh the memories playing Bon jovi dead or alive, love it!

Know what I loved doing when NASCAR was released in the early 90s…as soon as the race started, I would turn on invincibility but leave damage on for opponents, turn around and go backwards and wipe out all the cars then turn around the correct way and run all the laps for 1st place. It was so fun

I never played any DOS games before so it looks like I missed out on a lot of great gaming experiences.

Some great memories (and some bad ones like Fatal Racing crashing my PC all the time!) A few of my other favourites are Super Karts, Indy Car 2 and Slipstream 2000.

Street Rod was my first game ever, I still have the floppy disk. Beating that 1963 black corvette was just awesome.

Great great video as always Pete. I was never a PC gamer but I love watching videos exploring highlights such as these. Man, anyone who craps on GTA needs their head's examined. The game with out question still holds up very very well today. Also great learning about Quarantine, never heard about it before or it's Canadian roots.

One quite obscure game i used to play a lot as a kid was Speed Haste. One that's not talked about nearly enough

Ignition and wacky wheels were so good

Great Video! Alot of nostalgia since your List has the exact same games i used to play back in the day (except for Hi-Octane and Street Rod, never had those sadly) Screamer i liked too but Screamer 2 was so much better, loved the bit of Ralley twist they put on it. And Fatal Racing was my absolute Favourite. Winning the Championships on Impossible difficulty was so challenging, especially the Bonus Cup :)

I love the charm of these dos racing games

Street Rod is endlessly much better on Amiga though. And The Need for Speed should really have been on the list :) But you never claim that it's the only 15 essential driving games though, so I'll let it slide ;)

Carmageddon was available in the UK in it's uncensored form, I bought it on launch day. It's only after the initial run sold out that the censored version then appeared in its place. 🙂

Great Video and very interesting. Fun looking back. :)

Im glad Carma is getting some love. I remember playing carma 1 and 2 for hours on end with my brother as a kid. There were heaps of other good games too, Vette, Nascar, etc. I cant remember them all

Did you mention any rally games? I think Screamer 2 was a nice one

Brilliant list. Well, except for wacky wheels, that game is shit ;) I would've put Team 17's World Rally Fever in that spot. Kudos for including Ignition, that's a game that didn't get the attention it deserved. The DOS era had so many great driving games and it's my favourite genre to boot! Other games I loved playing: Papyrus Software's Indianapolis 500 and Indycar Racing II; Domark's Big Red Racing; Spectrum Holobyte's Stunt Driver; Cryo's MegaRace; Gremlin's Lotus III - The Ultimate Challenge; Activision's Interstate '76 and Remedy's Death Rally.

Destruction Derby was so good. Great vid Pete. Never seen that doom clone style driver before, looks ace.

Great list. Some fond memories of all of these games.. Plenty of people have mentioned the Nascar and Indycar games so I'll add one of my favourites...... APB or a classic top down cops N robbers game. Love it!

I had no idea half of these games existed. A lot of them looked like they would have been really rad to experience back in the day.

Great list, played all these back in the day.

Quarantine, thank you. I have watched several Carmageddon reviews over the years and had a thought I used to play that game or something very similar. Carmageddon didn't look right but I couldn't remember.

I might suggest Team17's World Rally Fever, super fun DOS racing game, with a Power Drift vibe to it. I also had Screamer, back in the day, so much fun, the rocket car was crazy.

Pete great videos as always mate , def 1 of my favroute driving games was geoff crammonds stunt car racer what a game , used to be hooked on that as a kid

great trip down memory lane. Especially Stunts - I spent countless hours playing that

Thanks for all this nostalgie

Death Rally, Need For Speed 1,2 and Papyrus with its Indy and Nascar games were amazing racing games for DOS.

I played almost all! 😂 Thank xou for that nice list!

Wow! Recognized almost all of them. Stunts and Test Drive / Test Drive II was my first PC car games. Quarantine was amazing and Carmageddon was special thing. No matter what they say about violence in computer games, it's better in games than on the street. Played GTA only to ride over Krishna chains and build barricades on road from cars and buses. Get quite bored after short time though (GTA 3 and later was different story, but those are offtopic here). Wacky Wheels and Super Off Road was super cool as well. Circa 1994/5 we played them in two player mode often :)

Screamer And hi octane - i love those two games, as quarantine and superoffroad, thanks for those memories

Highway Hunter, easily one of the most addicting top down racers with a great soundtrack!

"Late" DOS games were actually pretty awesome, especially with the 3dfx extras

I remember playing screamer, screamer 2 and screamer rally back in the day. Great games even by today's standards. I still play them on a occasion using dosbox. Pod was another good Dos racer

So much nostalgia, thanks for that. I just miss megarace, amazing racing game

Fantastic video Pete... I had every single one of these! I would have included Indy 500 by Papyrus too

Network Q Rally championship? I am not so big on rally games, but that was the first and only game that felt like "real driving" - we even bought a driving wheel together and it is pure awsome!

I grew up on DOS titles in the early 80s but I had NEVER seen Screamer. Wowsers! That looks as good as Out Run.

I've played probably about half of these at one point or another. Great games for their time, and some still hold up as playable for some fun today.

Being born in '93... Weirdly enough I remember quite a few of these. My dad always made sure to bring us some floppy disks from his buddies with all kinds of games for my sister and me to play. Not a driving game but I remember one of the hardest ones was prince of persia. Was a blast.

I absolutely loved Stunts! thanks for reminding me

I was obsessed with Stunts, so much fun

Death Rally and Ntework Q RAC Rally Championship were my favourites, particularly because it also gave some background on the cars like the Skoda and Proton themselves

Before Geoff Crammond did Grand Prix 2, he also did Stunt Car Racer (Stunt Track Racer), which had even more impressive physics for a DOS game. From Papyrus, there are also 2 essential games: Indianapolis 500: The Simulation and IndyCar Racing.

There are some brilliant classics here, I must play and (indeed replay) some of them. Carmageddon and it’s Fear Factory soundtrack. ♥️

Oh man, this is such a nostalgic trip for me! I was born '82 so many of these games hit right in my childhood. I played the hell out of Screamer, Carmageddon, Grand Theft Auto and Ignition. Tried Fatal Racing, Stunts and Super Off Road too (although the latter on SNES, not on PC) but never really got into them, altough I have a feeling I would have enjoyed Fatal Racing if I had just given it some more time. Another great driving game from that time that I played a lot was Death Rally, but I think that was a Windows game and not for DOS.

I remember playing screamer on a mates PC, had forgotten all about it. Hot rod reminds me of Chevy chase on the zx spectrum. Quarantine looks ace. I love destruction derby Super off road racer is another of my all time favourites, I'm fairly sure there isn't a bad version. Great top fifteen, enjoyed this.

MegaRace 2, great physics for the time. Came bundled with a 486 Packard Bell.

played almost all of those, but some of the most epic ones by the end of the DOS reign, like the need for speed R/T and destruction derby

I grew up playing Ignition! Other DOS racing game that I really enjoyed playing was Speed Haste: You can run F1 or Stock Car championships

I quite enjoyed Big Red Racing, was cool to be able to go off road and drive around, and do mad jumps all over the place

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but thanks for the video! There were lots of very happy memories rekindled from watching this. I will throw one more game into the mix that you may or may not have played, however. Did you ever play Supercars (or was it Super Cars?) and Supercars 2 on the Amiga? They were massively popular and influential when they were released. Unbeknownst to me at the time, there was also a Supercars International released on DOS which I had been UTTERLY unaware of until I found a copy of it by chance in a bargain bin - and it turns out it was basically Supercars 2.5. I personally thought that this was one of the best overhead racing/combat games ever made. If you can get it running in an emulator without any lag, it handles beautifully.