Hotshot Racing is a colorful '90s arcade racer out now on Steam

If you love racing, and consider yourself a hotshot, the newly released Hotshot Racing is probably already on your radar: it's a gorgeous retro-styled arcade racer in the vein of Horizon Chase Turbo, though Hotshot Racing seems to borrow more from Virtua Racing when it comes to the art style.

The launch trailer above makes extremely clear, you will be drifting a lot in this videogame, and you will be doing so across 16 circuits with a nice variety of locations: jungles, deserts, coastlines. There are four main modes—Time Trial and Grand Prix are self-explanatory, but there's also Cops and Robbers and Drive or Explode. The former has cops chasing robbers, and robbers evading cops, while the latter is a bit like Speed: if you fall below a certain speed your car will explode. 

There are different playable characters you can inhabit, which I suppose plays into the Grand Prix campaign. But there's all the online features you'd expect too: all modes support eight players online, there are leaderboards, and four-player local split-screen is also available.

Hotshot Racing is out now on Steam with a launch discount of 20 percent ($15.99 / £12.79 / AU$23.16).

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.