The best arcade games like Wave Race 64 are Wave Race: Blue Storm, Riptide GP: Renegade and Hydro Thunder Hurricane. 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 Wave Race 64 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 GameCube sequel, and the only real continuation.
The closest modern game — jet skis, waves, trick system.
Arcade boat racing with big water and bigger jumps.
By the Riptide developer, and directly modelled on Wave Race.
Nintendo's other physics-first arcade sports game of that era.
If the N64 arcade racing feel was the appeal.
For the same obsession with mastering one course.
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 Wave Race 64 that are not arcade games, so they are not on this page:
The full list is on games like Wave Race 64 — 9 picks, no genre filter.
Wave Race: Blue Storm. The GameCube sequel, and the only real continuation.
No. Wave Race 64 released on the Nintendo 64, 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 Wave Race 64 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.