The fastest growing area in the gaming industry is casual online games and massively popular are online racing car games. You can have hours of virtual fun with a basic personal computer and a broadband connection.

Whether you choose to race on the road, a dirt track or even in the air you'll nearly always be able to find the type of place you would like to race. Types of cars you can choose range from formula one cars, vintage cars and even yellow taxis!

Most of the online car games are built by developers using a technology called Flash so you need a flash enabled web browser to enjoy them. Web browsers such as Google Chrome and Safari on the Apple Mac have Flash built in. For the more common browser, Internet Explorer on Windows, you will likely need to install the flash plug-in from Adobe if it isn't already on your machine.

The online games are completely free and available from a variety of websites on the Internet. The easiest way to check if your browser has the correct plug-in installed is simply to go ahead and try playing one. You'll be prompted to install the additional plug-in if it's not already installed.

How can these car games be available online for free?

The publishers of car game websites have their overheads including design, development and hosting costs but like many things in this modern age, the revenue from advertising can cover those costs and allow them to provide the online games sites for free.

Many of the online car games available on these sites are developed by organisations for viral marketing purposes. You will notice their brand names and logos throughout the game as you play. Hence these games are provided free to get their brand in front of as many players as possible.

There are also lots of car game developers who simply love to code these games and make them available for free for anyone who wishes to play them. An entire industry has been built up around online games and the excitement of racing making car games some of the most appealing.

Many of the car games websites will keep a high score board allowing you to compete with players all around the world. 

So the next time you've got some time on you next lunchtime and are looking for a free bit of online fun, just fire up your web browser and Google 'car games' to discover the latest games to start playing.

About the author

Roary McQueen is a car games and racing nut from London, England who is particularly fond of all things racing and car games related and writes about them here.

Keywords: car games

Car games such as Mario Kart, Grand Theft Auto and Gran Turismo have sold millions of copies around the world. In more recent times online car games are becoming very popular. But how did online car games come about?

The history of online car games is inter weaved with the history of the computer, video games, the World Wide Web and all the associated technologies that make online gaming possible.

The First Computer Game

A.S. Douglas, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, created the first graphic computer game in 1952. Douglas programmed a version of naughts and crosses on an EDSAC computer. The EDSAC in Cambridge was the 2nd computer in the world, the first being located in the University of Manchester.

"Tennis for Two" was created in 1958 by William Higinbotham on an oscilloscope in Brookhaven National Laboratory. "SpaceWar!" was the first game programmed for computer use by Steve Russell in MIT using a PDP-1 mainframe computer.

Computer and video game technology progressed throughout the 60's with new inventions such as the mouse and windows. Progress culminated in 1968  with a the first public demonstration of a networked computer system in the Augmentation Research Center. The demonstration was the first public appearance of the mouse, windows, hypermedia with linking and addressing, and video conferencing.

1974 saw the first racing game by Atari named Gran Track 10. It had low-resolution graphics and it was a race against the clock rather than racing against other cars.

The First Car Game

It wasn't until 1982 when Namco released the first true car game that things really took off. Pole Position was the first game that allowed players to have cars to race against and was based on a real racing circuit.

1983 saw the birth of the Internet evolving from ARPANET that had started deployment in 1969. The Internet allowed for network games that could be run on peer-to-peer or client-server architectures.

The First Online Car Games

The Internet continued to develop and web browsers became more and more sophisticated. People started creating games that used web browsers as a client. HTML, JavaScript, ASP, PHP, MySQL and FLASH technologies have now progressed to such a point that many of the games developed in the 80's and 90's are now available to play for free online.  

So the next time you have a few minutes to kill why not Google "car games" and enjoy the race.

About the author

Roary McQueen is a car games and racing nut from London, England who is particularly fond of all things racing and car games related and writes about them here.

Keywords: car games

Welcome to our new car games website. Have fun playing online car and racing games. 

Over the next few months, we'll be scouring the web to compile the best car games available.

Enjoy!
iCarGames.co.uk