Games

Now I know you said you don't like realistic racing sims, but have you tried BeamNG? Although the physics and stuff are realistic it's a game that doesn't take itself too seriously so there's a lot of wacky arcadey stuff to do in it.

initial d stage 8 arcade and others initial d games with teknoparrot. There are a lot of other arcade racing games you can run on teknoparrot like sega rally, daytona, wangan midnight, outrun, H2Overdrive, grid, sega race tv, mario kart, etc The roms for them are available on archive.org including a torrent with a huuuge amount of other arcade games. Teknoparrot also supports racing wheels but I think you need to patch(available on github for individual games) the forcefeedback(old logitech wheels work great from what I have heard and it might not be hard to find a used one for real cheap)

Edit: I found that they are charging a subscription for some stuff now although it should still mostly work but if you want the open source version. You can get openparrot here but it hasn't been updated since 2019 :( I have used the closed source official version in the past and it worked well since I didn't have a better alternative. In their early days, they had some sort of invasive copyright protection which people called a spyware.

Rock n' Roll Racing, a sci-fi themed SNES racer in which you use prize money to buy vehicles upgrades like better engines, armor, guns, and mines. Soundtrack includes chiptune renditions of songs by bands such as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.

If motorcycles are your jam then there's Road Redemption on Steam. It's like Mario Kart but much more brutal, with guns, swords (and decapitations), and blunt weapons (to knock helmets off to pave way for decapitations).

Edit: forgot to mention, the game display artwork shows a cop about to get nailed with a nailbat. Also I think you get extra points for getting cops. Just saying.

Garfield Kart is the only racing game series I need.

I miss Burnout 3. That's the only racing game that I've ever wanted to play more than once, and it's the only one I've ever recommended to anyone else.

You should definitely try Blur which was 360 and PS3.

MotorStorm: Pacific Rift is my favorite arcade racer of all time on the PS3.

Has something like 9 classes of vehicles from motorcycles to big rigs and the various regiojs of tracks are all bangers.

It does require either a PS3 or a pretty strong CPU (7700x or better recommended) to emulate.

Crash Team Racing is goated, as is Diddy Kong Racing

Give Flatout 1 or 2 a shot. They're arcadey racers with a focus on destructible cars and wrecking your opponents. There's also a separate party game mode with lots of silly physics minigames mostly revolving around launching your car's driver through the windshield as a ragdoll to play curling, darts, soccer, etc

distance

tldr: at least as much 4 player split-screen fun as mario kart, but tends to run on most potatoes and is 6€. visually stunning, challenging, very enjoyable.

i was sceptical at first, but it’s right up there with mario kart (and for me wrc) as great single and multiplayer fun. i really love it for how bonkers it feels sometimes. it’s not as resource heavy as many other modern titles, has a great linux native version and tends to be fascinating to look at too. what confused and made me struggle at first is that you need to create multiple (offline in-game) profiles, one for each user in your split screen race (up to four ppl). so, if your controller needs some settings to be changed, you need to change it within the profile you’re using for your race. this is really cool as that way each player can have their own custom setup, but it really confused me at first…

Initial D is the only racer I love

SPEEDY SPEEDY BOY

GASOLINE’S BURNIN IN

Split Second is a cool hidden gem that has tons of map destruction and changes the course up each lap.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed that Star Wars Pod Racing game when it came out.

I used to play Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing on my 360, I remember really liking this game, but from what I seen the newest one, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, is really good too, and it has Hatsune Miku which is super cool!

For games with no vroom vroom noises if speed is enough for you:

• I used to love playing Sonic Riders Zero Gravity, but from what I have seen online, the consensus is that the first Riders game is considered better, tho I never played it, and there's also a modding scene for both with competitive play. This video goes over it if you're interested.
• Haste is an indie game about running super fast that looks super cool, but I haven't played it yet.
• If you're into shooters, Ultrakill let's you get FAST, blasting through no stop at the speed of light scratches an itch in my brain I didn't knew could be scratched. Also the fanbase is thirsty for Gabriel (yes, the angel) and constantly makes yaoi of him and V1 (the playable character) if you're into that.

There's also arcade racers that tend to be beloved like Daytona for example, but I never played any of them.

See I want realistic so I can funnel my autism into tuning the car to be juuuust perfect for the right scenario.

Oooh let’s increase camber and decrease caster. Maybe decrease bump stiffness but add a touch of rebound.

They need to bring back the CaRPG. It's such a shame what happened to Gran Turismo, there was nothing like it

Download Sega Model 2 and Model 3 emulators and you can play Sega Rally 1 & 2, Daytona USA 1 & 2, Indy 500, Sega Touring Car Championship, etc.

There's been something of a modern revival in arcade racing games too with games like Parking Garage Rally Circuit (has mods and lots of user created tracks too, with official DLC coming soon) and Victory Heat Rally.

Sega 32X version of Virtua Racer. Daytona USA. Any Sega Rally game. Any of the Tokyo Xtreme Racer games.

I love using shitty everyday cars in realistic racing games.

grip: combat racing is fun. I also have enjoyed various need for speed games. NFS Heat and NFS Rivals were both fun.

I think you maybe would like these games

speed freaks, r4, wipeout, jet moto, cyber speedway, San Francisco rush 2049, crazy taxi, NASCAR rumble, hot wheels turbo racing, crash team racing, roll cage, 18 wheeler, rumble racing, freekstyle,stuntman, freaky flyers, super runabout, hydro thunder, xgra, rumble racing

Flatout. Kinda like a rally racing version of burnout. Same devs i think. Crazy taxi games are classic. Red out probably the fastest racing game ever.