Midnight Club: Street Racing is a racing video game that focuses on the import scene and illegal street racing. Players can explore the open world or race in organized street races. A career mode has the player working their way up in the street racing world, defeating named opponents in various races, ultimately resulting in pink slip races to win the opponent's car. The game features 17 cars for the player to win throughout the career mode, ranging from taxi cabs, buses and other city vehicles to fictional representations of vehicles resembling famous Toyota, Nissan and Honda tuner vehicles.

Arcade mode allows players to compete in various game mode challenges, and to play in two player split-screen multiplayer. This features four modes: Capture the Flag, Cruise, Head to Head, and Waypoint. Players can again compete for pink slips from various racers. Each named racer has three variants of the same car, and the player earns these with successive wins. Each new version of the car is an improved version of the previous car. Environments have many destructible objects such as trees, bushes, lampposts and trash cans. Each locale features police cars that will attempt to arrest the player based on their illegal actions.

Along with Turbo Esprit and Midtown Madness, the game pioneered the use of an open world environment design instead of predefined circuit tracks. Two locales are available to players, New York City and London. Each city contains landmarks from their respective real life counterparts. Some of London's visible landmarks include Trafalgar Square, the Palace of Westminster and its Big Ben, and the Tower Bridge. New York includes such landmarks as Times Square, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center,[2] Rockefeller Center, United Nations Plaza, Plaza Hotel, Madison Square Garden, Washington Square Park, the Wall Street Bull, Battery Park and Central Park.