The best arcade games like Gran Turismo are Forza Horizon 5, Ridge Racer Type 4 and Wreckfest. Below are 7, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to arcade costs you.
Filtering to arcade means you want short runs and a score, not a campaign. It is the right filter when what you liked was the one-more-go feeling.
What you get: A complete experience in twenty minutes, and a skill you keep. Arcade design is measured in the moment after you lose.
What made Gran Turismo worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the arcade part of that answer, and only the arcade part.
The arcade side of the same obsession — the cars matter, the rules do not.
Same generation, opposite philosophy: atmosphere and drift over simulation.
Contact racing with a proper damage model, and the most fun in the list.
Surface-change handling that GT never attempted, from the arcade.
For the obsession with one perfect lap, free and endless.
If the corner you keep replaying was the appeal, not the tuning screen.
The pure drive, with none of the paperwork.
Story and progression. Arcade games repeat on purpose, and if you want to be pulled somewhere they will not do it.
Specifically, these are strong answers for Gran Turismo that are not arcade games, so they are not on this page:
The full list is on games like Gran Turismo — 12 picks, no genre filter.
Forza Horizon 5. The arcade side of the same obsession — the cars matter, the rules do not.
No. Gran Turismo released on the PlayStation, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.
They were designed to end. A machine that let you play for an hour on one coin did not earn its floor space, so difficulty was the business model.
Constantly, mostly by small teams. Several of the best beat-em-ups and run-and-guns of the last decade are new games built on forty-year-old design rules.
By hand. Each pick was written for the full Gran Turismo list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is arcade — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.
Or read the arcade guide for where to start in the genre generally.