The 10 Best Racing Games For The Nintendo Switch

Slipstream is a love letter to those classic sprite-scaling racers where you’d drive endlessly into the horizon, drifting across gentle bends and dodging traffic that always seems to be going damn near as fast as you are. And with the recent Blue Hour expansion, it’s gotten even better, with beautiful new courses inspired by sunsets in Europe, complete with bit-crushed style photo textures on buildings and scenery that lend a gorgeous mid-’90s vibe to the whole affair. Personally I find the handling is not quite as sharp as I like it to be — turning the game speed down to 90 percent or less seems to help — but fans of retro racers owe it to themselves to give Slipstream a run.

Honestly, I cannot stand the way Hot Pursuit 2010 handles. I couldn’t 13 years ago, and I still can’t today. But taking a more objective view of things, this was one of the premier arcade racers of the second-to-last console generation, thanks to its stunning environmental design and simple, stripped-down cat-versus-mouse gameplay. It’s every bit the game it was on Nintendo Switch, with an all-star cast of the late-2000's finest performance cars, joined by a few more nostalgic rides in the mix.

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Some people really love Crash Team Racing — like, to an obsessive level. And Activision’s remake of the PlayStation original kart racer did a very respectable job of bringing the experience to modern platforms. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still pretty unbeatable thanks to its smooth 60 frame-per-second gameplay, peerless course design and tight handling, but CTR: Nitro-Fueled is worthy of a mention for anyone looking for a more story-driven, adventure-type karting experience — especially if they firmly sided with team Sony during the console wars almost 30 years ago.

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Retro-remaster mavens M2 released a stunning recreation of Sega’s 1986 classic Out Run exclusively for the Nintendo Switch back in 2019. Thanks to a doubled framerate the game has never played better; it’s never sounded better either, as Sega Ages Out Run has six songs beyond the original title’s legendary three. M2 went the extra step to recreate many of these using the original arcade board’s sound hardware too, which is exactly the attention to detail that makes the studio’s work so fantastic. This won’t be the last time we sing their praises in this list.

At the tail end of the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 console generation, Codemasters quietly released Grid Autosport — a more motorsport-minded entry in the franchise, with a basis on real racing disciplines and courses. Autosport isn’t a full simulation by any stretch, but that also makes it well-suited for the Switch. Feral Interactive handled porting duties here, even going so far as to include a high-framerate mode with reduced detail for a much more responsive driving experience. If you’ve been hankering for a slightly more serious racing game on your handheld, this is the one.

Technically we’re not talking about a specific game here, but rather the collections of retro titles Nintendo offers through its Switch Online subscription service. While I know $20 for the base tier (for the NES, Super Nintendo, GameBoy and GBA libraries) or $50 for the premium option (adding the Nintendo 64) is not cheap over time, there are some seriously legendary racing games included in these plans. From the original Super Mario Kart and F-Zero to deep cuts like Stunt Race FX and the forever-underrated Wave Race 64, Nintendo fans of a certain age can easily revisit a time when the company wasn’t afraid to make racing games without the denizens of Mushroom Kingdom in them. Excitebike 64 is next to arrive sometime this year and I’m stoked to take the holeshot as “Jumpin’ Jim” Rivers once again.

Shin’en Multimedia’s Fast RMX was a launch title for the Switch way back in 2017, but don’t let that dissuade you. If you haven’t played it before, you’re likely to find it’s a deserving spiritual successor to F-Zero GX, between its stunning visuals (especially if you’re fortunate enough to have an OLED Switch model), blistering sense of speed and — for better or worse — excruciating level of difficulty. You’ve been warned.

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No racing game has been as fun for me and my group of friends in recent years as Wreckfest, and the Switch version of Bugbear’s demolition-fueled racer maintains everything console and PC players have enjoyed for years. The framerate is capped at 30 frames per second, but it’s consistent, and the physics still strike that perfect balance between being easy to pick up but challenging to master, particularly if you forgo assists like traction control. Wreckfest is a blast, and if you haven’t played it yet the Switch version is a fine way to dip your toes in. Word of warning, though: there’s unfortunately no cross-play multiplayer with your friends on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.

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Sega’s Virtua Racing was one of the earliest polygonal racing games alongside the likes of Hard Drivin’ and Winning Run, and certainly the first to properly convey a smooth sense of speed. While Virtua Racing had been ported from Sega’s CG Board arcade tech to consoles multiple times through the ’90s and early 2000s, until M2's Sega Ages release on Switch in 2019 it was never recreated in “arcade perfect” fashion. In fact, the Switch port plays even better than the 1992 original, because M2 doubled the framerate to 60 frames per second, while also adding support for up to eight-player (!) local multiplayer.

This is the kind of faithful remaster for modern platforms we’d love to see Sega exercise for the rest of its golden-era ’90s racers, like Daytona USA, Sega Rally and Scud Race, but for now at least we got Virtua Racing. I highly recommend watching Digital Foundry’s John Linneman compare the game’s various releases in the video above.

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Burnout Paradise Remastered is one of the greatest racing games of the last 20 years, so it’s certainly a fortunate thing that Electronic Arts and Stellar Entertainment ported the game to the Switch in 2020. Personally I’ve played through Paradise many, many times since the game first came out in 2008, and yet I never tire of its tight handling, addictive combat-focused gameplay and playground of an open world — nor do I tire of all of that unfolding to the soundtrack of Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend.” Having it on a device I could take on a plane is nothing less than a godsend.

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You all knew what was going to finish on the top spot of this list, but there’s a reason why Mario Kart 8 has sold more than 50 million copies across its Wii U and Switch releases. If all racing games on the Switch were developed with Nintendo’s production values and laser focus on the hardware’s strengths, it’d be a much better platform for the genre. Even though the Deluxe version is more than six years old, it still receives new content via the Booster Course Pack which will add a whopping 48 additional courses to the game by the time it’s all said and done. That expansion pack is included with the $50 annual tier for Nintendo Switch Online, by the way, just to sweeten the pot.

That’s our list of the 10 best racing games on the Nintendo Switch. There are certainly more that just fell outside the top 10, though, so let us know what you think should’ve placed down in the comments.

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