The beautiful Ridge Racer V was 60 fps as was every RR game after until 3DS. Ridge Racers on PSP at launch was mind blowing.
Most racers on ps2 are 60 fps as well.
Ridge Racer 7 was 1080p@60fps at PS3 launch too, but still, we had 4 ridge racers at 30fps at the height of the games popularity and then 3@60 when the franchise was starting to die. If anything that shows that it really made no difference to the masses if it was 30fps before and 60fps later.
I know, definitely didn't mean Ridge Racer 1, PS1 was quite horrible at first when it comes to framerates, especially in Europe, but Ridge Racer as a franchise went 60fps-locked later on just like Wipeout, Burnout and pretty much all serious arcade racers. Then it all went downhill. Don't know which game was first but it escalated quickly and now we're at the point where 30fps is considered being okay for arcade racers, which I honestly find strange since they're usually faster and imo not in any way compatible with low framerates. And when Driveclub at 30fps is now acceptable it makes you wonder how far off we are from letting a Gran Turismo with awesome graphics at 30fps get a free pass too. :/
I don't think anyone started it. It didn't really escalate from a single game or epiphany. 30fps was always considered to be OK by the masses, in every console generation. People (including myself) played Mario kart 64 at 15fps for crying out loud. Project Gotham Racing (30fps), MSR (30fps), Ridge Racer 1-4 (30 fps), even the original Forza, a sim racer, was 30fps.
It's actually a lot easier for developers to not develop new visual effects and put old engines on faster hardware to reach ever higher framerates and we kind of had a period of that, but its importance is overstated. People seem to prefer more realism/better graphics.
Hope you don't get me wrong, I like higher framerates. To be a little more on topic, I'll definitely get the PS4 version of Project cars, for the better framerate and resolution. It's just not the end of the world that Forza Horizon 2 and Driveclub are 30fps. We've had plenty of 30fps games in the past.
Err, not that I disagree with what you're saying, but WipeOut Fusion had terrible slowdowns.
As long as the input polling is done at a higher rate, I'll take locked 30 fps versus fluctuating framerate in any racer.
Colin Mcrae Rally was also notoriously bad. Went from 50-something to 20fps. A lot of games on that list were like that. People don't know how good they have it this gen.
Edit: seems Lastword already listed the games that gained their popularity at 30fps