Racing game

The racing video game genre is the genre of video games, either in the first-person or third-person perspective, in which the player partakes in a racing competition with any type of land, air, or sea vehicles. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings. In general, they can be distributed along a spectrum anywhere between hardcore simulations, and simpler arcade racing games. Racing games may also fall under the category of sports games.

In 1973, Atari's Space Race was a space-themed arcade game where players controlled spaceships that race against opposing ships, while avoiding comets and meteors. It was a competitive two-player game controlled using a two-way joystick, and was presented in black and white graphics. The same year, Taito released a similar space-themed racing game Astro Race, which used an early four-way joystick.

The following year, Taito released Speed Race, an early driving racing game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado (of Space Invaders fame). The game's most important innovation was its introduction of scrolling graphics, specifically overhead vertical scrolling, with the course width becoming wider or narrower as the player's car moves up the road, while the player races against other rival cars, more of which appear as the score increases. It also featured an early racing wheel controller interface with an accelerator, gear shift, speedometer and tachometer. It could be played in either single-player or alternating two-player, where each player attempts to beat the other's score. The game was re-branded as Wheels by Midway Games for release in the United States and was influential on later racing games. That same year, Atari released another early car driving game in the arcades, Gran Trak 10, which presented an overhead single-screen view of the track in low resolution white on black graphics, on which the player races against the clock around a track to accumulate points; while challenging, it was not competition racing.

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