Sim racing is thriving - where did the arcade racer go?

I became a racing-game fan at five playing Lego Racers on my great grandfather’s Windows 95 Gateway PC and later spent hours careening the Subaru Impreza Rally Car '99 into walls in Gran Turismo 2. Sim racing, however, never quite clicked for me, and that matters because sims have largely supplanted mainstream arcade and simcade racers.

Bored during the pandemic and freshly laid off, I bought a Thrustmaster T150 RS—an entry-level wheel with a three-pedal box and an optional manual shifter—and drove tuner cars in Forza Horizon 4 while trying to make realistic driving videos. The hobby’s promise is obvious: high-end hardware that reproduces every vibration through force-feedback wheels and haptic seating.

My $300 setup was fun, but without another $2,000 in equipment it only offered a middling facsimile of real driving. Sim racing player counts have grown dramatically over the past decade, and the mainstream genre has narrowed around a single dominant franchise, leaving little competition.

sim racing, arcade racers, simcade, forza horizon, gran turismo, thrustmaster t150, force feedback, haptic seating, racing wheel, tuner cars