Death Race

Death Race is an arcade game released in 1976 by Exidy. Loosely inspired by the movie Death Race 2000, the game has players controling a car with the goal of crashing into gremlins in order to earn points. The game can be played by one player or two players simultaneously.

The game screen in Death Race contains a curb along the left and right sides with a large open area in the middle with numerous gremlins running in random directions. Each player controls a car and attempts to crash into as many gremlins as possible; each gremlin run over earns points and the goal is to earn as many points as possible before time runs out (depending on the game settings, anywhere from 80 to 135 seconds were provided). Players can drive anywhere on the screen except for the extreme left and right sides which are blocked by the curb; the gremlins, however, can cross the curb making it the one same spot for them. The gremlins are constantly on the move, and new ones appear as others are eliminated. Each time the player runs into a gremlin, it turns into a cross-shaped tombstone. Players are not able to drive over the tombstones, so as more gremlins are run over the screen becomes cluttered making the game more difficult.

Death Race was one of the first controversial video games; for it's time it was viewed as being excessively violent and attracted a lot of criticism from newspapers and other organizations. Despite the negative press around the game, the attention actually helped Exidy sell more units than originally anticipated.