35. CART World Series - PS1 (Duckstation)
4(Sony Interactive Studios America 🇺🇸 1997)
This was another discovery I would have never made without an emulator, because it was never released outside North America ! Of the 3 CART racing games I could find on the PS1, this was clearly the best one ! It is based on the 1997 CART championship, but not in full, as only 10 of the 17 races are featured. Thankfully, the most iconic tracks Long Beach and Laguna Seca are here. Also, Michael Andretti is missing, probably because he had his own PS1 game (that isn't as good).
The graphics look very outdated obviously, but when compared to Formula One 97, released the same year on PS1, it looks just as good if not better ! Another important quality is the difficulty, as even on easy I finished 7th in the championship and really had to battle hard to get podium finishes ! While the controls are kind of stiff, what I like about this game is just how easy it is to pick up and play, because the cars stick well to the road. This means even players with little experience with racing games can get good pretty fast, making for some great races in multiplayer. Speaking of the multiplayer, this game has a splitscreen in which you can race against an entire grid, and do an entire championship ! It even had link-up mode, with up to 4 players ! I am sure I would have loved this game back in the day !
My score : 8/10 (Great)
My PS1 Emulation server : https://discord.gg/Ta2axJk7 (server without self entitled power crazy mods)