Death Race and the Beginning of Videogame Controversy

GTA. Saint's Row. Bully. Doom. We all know the types. For as long as there have been video games, there has been the attached controversy. But my question is, when did the public start treating video games like the coming of your preferred religion's dastardly bad guy?

The answer is Death Race.

The game has a simple enough premise. you have a steering wheel and you drive a car around hitting "zombies". when you hit one, a grave pops up.

(Download the game here if you believe you can stand it's corrupting influence)

Make sure to read the readme, it makes sense of the seemingly buggy port, but works fine.

Anyway. This completely realistic driving spree simulator (as I'm sure JT would have put it) was loosely based off the much more violent, much less controversial Death Race 3000 movie, and was released by a company called Exidy in 1976 to a hostile audience. the "zombies" looked like stick men and as such, were presumed by many to be humans. Some thought this awesome. Most however did not.


After selling horribly partially due to the controversy and partially due to it really not being a very good game, 500 of the cabinets were made, putting newcomer Exidy on a monetary back foot for much of the company's game development history.


Now. To the game. As already stated, the aim is to hit as many zombies as you can under 30 seconds, avoiding the graves which will slow you down. The game then gives you a rank based on your score, which goes like this:

• 1-3 points: skeleton chaser
• 4-10 points: bone cracker
• 11-20 points: gremlin hunter
• 21+ points: expert driver

The game also has a two player mode, allowing the cars to stop each other and generally get in each others way, with no way in either mode to actually die.

Honestly, the game got really grating the second time i played it. The controversy was there, but that hasn't stopped games like GTA. It was genuinely bad. Controls were annoying, the graphics were bad, even for it's time, the only upside being some of the coolest cabinet art seen during those times, but that can only help the game so much.

Well, that's it for another game. I'll be back next whenever to find yet another game that defined our culture, to love and cherish, or to mock and despise. But I still have a goal to play all the defining moments of our history, and the goal is as enticing and impossible as ever.

Dismeeir