If you're a beloved video game character, you know that you've made it to the upper echelon of fame if you get a racing spinoff. It seems like every series worth its salt gets its due in a racing game eventually, whether it's a classic like Mario Kart or a cheap cash-in like... most other racing spinoffs.
But given the prevalence of the racing spinoff, it's strange that many beloved series haven't gotten strapped into a high-speed vehicle. Maybe one day these games will get their due, but in the meantime, we can only imagine what these racing spinoffs might look like.
10 Kingdom Hearts
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Final Fantasy has a racing spinoff in the form of the controversial Chocobo GP. Disney characters have similarly featured in a myriad of kart racers over the years. Yet the gaming public is still waiting for Kingdom Hearts' turn around the track - Kingdom Karts, if you will.
Kingdom Hearts takes place in a number of visually striking locations with a diverse cast of recognizable characters, making it perfect for a racer. And between the Gummi Ship offering a convenient template for vehicle upgrades, and the ease of translating the series' magic system into offensive and defensive items, it's downright bizarre that we haven't gotten it yet.
9 Banjo-Kazooie
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Mario Kart set the mold for the kart racing genre: take a friendly platforming mascot, throw them in a go-kart, and print money. Beloved characters like Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, and Mega Man have all followed suit. And while Mario's stablemate Donkey Kong even got a racer of sorts in the beloved Diddy Kong Racing, the similarly Rare-developed Banjo hasn't had the same opportunity.
Banjo-Kazooie would be perfect for a kart racer. The varied levels and colorful, cartoonish characters would fit right in with the genre. And given how Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts And Bolts turned out, Banjo deserves the opportunity to actually do racing right this time.
8 Street Fighter
Street Fighter took the gaming industry by storm in the 90s, just around the time that Super Mario Kart first introduced the idea of a mascot racer to the world. And while Capcom's premier fighting series isn't quite as family-friendly as Mario, Street Fighter could lend itself to a more grown-up racer - Street Fighter Street Racer, perhaps.
Street Fighter's characters are iconic, but more importantly, Street Fighter is cool. Can't you just imagine Ryu and Chun-Li duking it out on a neon-soaked city street, swerving around buildings and pedestrians? It would be arcade racing bliss.
7 Persona
Persona, once a humble Shin Megami Tensei spinoff itself, has grown to eclipse the series that spawned it. Its stylish presentation, emotional storytelling, challenging battles, and addictive life-sim mechanics have turned it into a juggernaut. We've gotten Persona spinoffs that range from rhythm games to first-person dungeon crawlers, brawlers, and musou games.
Given how much people love this series, why not toss in a Persona combat racer? You could use different enemies as your items and throw in beloved characters from each entry. Sounds like a great time to us!
6 Katamari Damacy
The Katamari Damacy series is practically a racing game already - you control a character zipping through compact levels, trying to reach your goal as quickly as you can, using momentum and movement to speed up your progress. That just sounds like your average racing game, though with a few twists of its own, of course.
Heck, the Katamari games even include a multiplayer mode where you and a friend compete to create the biggest Katamari, bashing into each other to slow their progress. That's basically the Mario Kart battle mode. All you'd have to do to make a Katamari racer is design some courses.
5 Resident Evil
Pretty much every kart racer features a level set in or around a haunted mansion. Resident Evil famously takes place in haunted mansions. You see what we are getting at here?
Resident Evil is no stranger to weird spinoffs, either - never forget the top-down Game Boy Color offshoot, Resident Evil Gaiden - so a racer wouldn't be that out of place. Moreover, between the series' distinct characters and memorable locations, there's a lot of material for an excellent racer.
4 Metal Gear
This one might seem a little odd, but bear with us here. The Metal Gear series has spawned its share of weird offshoots - remember the deckbuilding tactical RPG spinoff, Metal Gear Acid? Moreover, Metal Gear's Gray Fox made an appearance in the obscure GBA game Konami Krazy Racers. Clearly, there's a precedent here.
But we haven't gotten a real, serious racing game in the Metal Gear universe. Imagine a gritty and mature racing game, set in a Need For Speed-style open world, that allows you to absorb the texture of the series' weirdo dystopian futures from the perspective of a normal citizen.
3 Klonoa
It remains unclear as to what exactly Klonoa is, but we think we can all agree that he's the best boy and a floppy angel. Any platforming icon as cuddly as this has to have some kind of racing spinoff at some point, so it's downright bizarre that Klonoa hasn't gotten the same treatment.
The second Klonoa game even includes several surfing and skateboarding sequences, which would translate beautifully to a Sonic Riders-style racer. In a world where Namco's given us Klonoa Beach Volleyball, Klonoa Kart just makes perfect sense.
2 Bayonetta
Given that Nintendo seems dedicated to making Mario Kart into Super Smash Kart, it's all but inevitable that we'll see Bayonetta in a future installment - but that doesn't mean she can't have her own racing spinoff in the meantime.
Bayonetta's whole design is a callback to the weird, campy action games of the 2000s, so why not give her an action-racing spinoff á la Jak X? Set Bayonetta loose in some hellacious tracks, let her use her hair as a car, whatever. With this series, the weirder, the better.
1 Pokemon
Okay, so there have been Pokemon racing games - two, in fact - but they were both obscure, underwhelming titles that barely featured any gameplay. Given that we've gotten robust, full-featured Poke-photography simulators, Poke-roguelikes, and even Poke-pinballers, it's a travesty that there's no Poke-racer that really does the series justice.
It wouldn't even be difficult to make it fit within the series' milieu - if people battle with Pokemon, why wouldn't they race with them too? You could have your trainer ride a team of Pokemon, using different abilities to navigate through tricky tracks. Besides, it's probably kinder than having your Pokemon beat each other up.