Fuse Games' Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a true original, bringing much-needed innovation to the racing game genre with its roguelite campaign structure, one-of-a-kind multiplayer, and genius use of the Star Wars licence. But that's not to say you can't find some similar thrills elsewhere. Galactic Racer exists in a proud lineage of sci-fi, anti-gravity racing games, and in the equally proud lineage of Criterion Games, the Guildford-based developer where Fuse's founders and many of its staff worked.
You can have a lot of fun tracking Galactic Racer's influence back (and forward) through the genre. Here are seven great racing games that, if you're into Galactic Racer, you should try. Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One Let's start with the obvious.
Galactic Racer's clear antecedent is the fondly remembered 1999 LucasArts game, Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, which was released alongside the first of the prequel movies, The Phantom Menace. (It's playable today via a 2020 port to modern consoles.) Recreating the movie's blistering podrace sequence and adding additional tracks and planets, Episode 1: Racer also features an afterburner boost mechanic that can overheat and blow up your craft — just like Galactic Racer's ramjet. Where to play: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. Included in EA Play, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and PC Game Pass.
If you want to understand Galactic Racer's racing heritage, you have to play a Burnout game. Fuse Games is founded by staff from Criterion Games, which created the Burnout series, and Burnout's high-octane racing action, focused on boost mechanics and wrecking opponents, is a clear influence on Galactic Racer. 2008's open-world Burnout Paradise isn't the closest in spirit to Galactic Racer — that would probably be the aggressive Burnout 3: Takedown — but it is the best, and the easiest to play on modern systems thanks to a 2018 remaster. Where to play: Nintendo Classics GameCube collection on Nintendo Switch 2 — included in a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription Nintendo's F-Zero series was one of the pioneers of sci-fi anti-grav racing games when it launched on the SNES in 1990, and immediately set the standard for blistering speed and intense competition between huge fields of racers.
You can sample pretty much the entire series on Nintendo Classics, or try the brilliant battle-royale twist on it, F-Zero 99, on Nintendo Switch Online. But, for my money, the pick of the bunch is 2003's F-Zero GX for GameCube, which was made by Toshihiro Nagoshi at Sega's Amusement Vision studio (Super Monkey Ball). F-Zero is a perfect match for Sega's brash and intense racing-game style, and the result is transcendent.
The other grand dame of sci-fi racing is, of course, Sony's Wipeout series, which features (somewhat) more realistic physics than F-Zero and adds a suite of weapons and pickups clearly influenced by Mario Kart. Wipeout purists would probably pick either the 1995 PS1 original or its sequel Wipeout 2097, but this 2017 compilation of PS3/Vita-era games is the easiest to play in the here and now — and it's also stunningly beautiful. No list of sci-fi racing games is complete without a nod to the Fast series by German indie developer Shin'en Multimedia.
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