I have spent the last week careening around Japan in a Porsche 911, seeing the sights, racing other cars and occasionally veering off the road to plummet through an ancient bamboo forest. You all know what’s coming next … this wasn’t in real life, folks – it was in Forza Horizon 6, the latest instalment in Microsoft’s series of open world driving games set in authentic-looking, real-world locations.
Reviewing this game (which is out now on Xbox and PC, and coming to PS5 later in the year) has reminded me of the sheer fun and exhilaration that driving games can provide. It’s easy to forget, but this was the biggest genre in town from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Consoles were sold on how good their racing games were: the original PlayStation had Ridge Racer, the Sega Saturn had Daytona USA. Later came the dirt-track thrills of Colin McRae Rally, the chaotic destruction of Burnout, the sophisticated realism of Gran Turismo. They were the bestsellers of the era, showcasing the future of real-time 3D visuals.
But then came time-sucking open-world fantasy adventures, mega-hit first-person shooters and the live-service behemoths Fortnite and Minecraft. The mainstream drifted away. Mario Kart hung about, of course, and there are still annual F1 and MotoGP titles, as well as hardcore sims such as Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing. But big-budget blockbuster racers have largely driven off into the, well, horizon.
It’s a shame because, as Forza Horizon 6 shows, there is so much joy in this genre. Driving sims are rare because they are, at their best, aspirational and relatable. Most adults who play games have driven a real car, so the experience is familiar – this is why from the late 1960s on, driving games were a staple feature of amusement arcades. At first that meant electromechanical oddities such as Kasco’s 1968 classic Indy 500, which used a rear projection system to display a simple road on the screen, but later came video games from Atari’s minimalist classic Night Driver to the 1980s legend OutRun. You put a machine with a steering wheel, a gear stick and an accelerator pedal in a seaside arcade and almost everyone would have a go.
Yet, racing games also provide a fantasy element. All drivers hold in our heads an idealised vision – an open-road, a glorious sunset, a fast convertible – that is often beyond reach. When Sega game designer Yu Suzuki designed OutRun, this is exactly what he set out to capture: you’re driving a Ferrari along coastal roads, listening to cool music on the radio, a beautiful girl by your side. It’s not about racing, it’s about living.
It’s tempting to say that gamers moved on because the technology allowed it. Circuit racing games became open world racing games (Test Drive Unlimited, Burnout Paradise), which became open world adventures such as Grand Theft Auto, where you could drive and shoot people. But I wonder if there were also deeper cultural, and even sociopolitical, elements at play. Driving in real life these days is about rapidly inflating fuel costs, traffic jams, pot holes and the growing sense that a car is like a white good: you should get something as functional, economical and environmentally responsible as possible. Perhaps driving games are like road movies – they spoke to a generation which saw the car as a source of freedom and excitement rather than expense, drudgery and environmental collapse.
All I know is that Forza Horizon 6 is incredible fun, and the chance to explore a compacted version of Japan has been wonderful. Perhaps it will spark a mainstream revival of the non-specialist driving game. Grand Theft Auto VI is also on the way later this year, and it will surely feature races and driving quests as part of its campaign and multiplayer offerings. I’m also hoping that the independent developer scene, currently drawing a lot of inspiration from the 1990s era of low-polygon 3D visuals, will come up with some crossover hit that exhumes the spirit of Ridge Racer and Daytona USA. Earlier this year, the Italian developer Milestone revived its Screamer title, a neon-drenched retro arcade racer, with some success. I think there will be more.
The escapist fast-car game is not dead – it’s just in a layby, revving up.
What to play
I am very into the trend of games that remix one or more genres into weird new experiences – à la Mythmatch, Titanium Court and Forbidden Solitaire – so I had to download Amberspire, by Lunar Division. It’s a sort of city building game, except you’re building the city on top of a giant mausoleum dedicated to a long-dead civilisation, and also, you get resources by rolling giant dice across the landscape and seeing what comes up.
In this way, urban planning becomes a chance-filled endeavour, rather than a purely intellectual task, and this sense of precariousness is amplified by the fact that in each turn, there is also an event dice roll that may suddenly inflict some ruinous storm on your brittle community. It’s an intriguing concept with an eerie mythology and ecological elements. If you enjoyed SimCity, but were frustrated by your inability to roll dice in order to decide the fate of your population like some sort of crazed deity, this one is for you.
Available on: PC
Estimated playtime: 10-plus hours
What to read
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Haters of gratuitous caps lock abuse, look away now. Microsoft has rebranded Xbox: from now on it will be XBOX. On 13 May, incoming CEO Asha Sharma put this vitally important change to fans via the democratically reliable medium of the Twitter poll, and 64% of voters were onboard, so here we are. XBOX!
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Writer and academic Cameron Kunzelman considers the particular form and meaning of nostalgia found in the coming-of-age adventure, Mixtape, over on his blog, a question of machines.
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Is the games-as-a-service era over? Gamesindustry.biz looks at the latest earnings figures and wonders whether the industry can learn anything from Capcom’s spate of successful (and sensibly budgeted) single-player titles.
What to click
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How Forza Horizon took on Japan with deep research – and 360-degree cameras
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Gotta catch an MP! Players ‘debate’ UK politicians in Pokémon-style game
Question Block
A question from reader Jamie:
“I was telling my children about the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 games I used to love and I wondered if there are any museums where they could see and perhaps even play these glorious old machines?”
There are plenty of museums around Britain dedicated to computers. The largest are the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley, the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge (soon hosting a special event for the 50th anniversary of the Z80 processor, which powered the ZX Spectrum) and the Museum of Computing in Swindon. These all house a range of machines from the very first electronic computers to more recent models, including classic 8-bit micros such as the Speccy and Commodore. They also hold regular events and workshop sessions, so your kids could try programming in Basic or building little robots. There are plenty of smaller local museums too, including the Cave in Stroud and the Micro Museum in Ramsgate. I’d also recommend the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, which always has playable exhibits. Oh, and watch out for occasional computing exhibitions and events at the National Museum of Scotland and the Science Museum in London.
Alternatively, you could just go wild and buy an old computer? You can get a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 in reasonable condition for around £50-75 on eBay or at a retro computing fair (RetroFest an annual event dedicated to old home computers, is in Swindon from 30-31 May), although make sure it comes with all the leads and a compatible cassette player or disc drive. You’ll also need a TV with an RF cable port, or an adaptor that will convert the RF output to modern HDMI so you can plug it into an LED monitor. Although admittedly, this is quite a lot of expense and effort to go to just to show your kids Horace Goes Skiing.
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.