Death Race

Released in April, 1976, Death Race is a modification of Exidy’s 1975 game Destruction Derby in which players crashed into cars to accrue points. In Death Race, the objective became to run into "gremlins" to gain score. In 1975, Exidy licensed its game Destruction Derby to arcade game company Chicago Coin to manufacture. However, the following year Chicago Coin entered financial difficulties which would eventually lead to the dissolution of the company, and as Exidy had sold exclusive manufacturing rights they could not longer profit from Destruction Derby. Needing an interim product to introduce to distributors, they decided to modify the Destruction Derby game so that it would be saleable by their organization. Newly arrived engineer Howell Ivy from Ramtek made several modifications to Destruction Derby in order to create this new product. He added curbs to the left and right of the screen that the enemies could hide behind, but players would be stalled if they attempted to cross over. On the top and bottom of the screen, players could wrap around to the opposite side in a manner similar to Atari’s Space Race (1973). The goal of the game was fairly simple, if somewhat gruesome – rather than trying to destroy each other’s cars, the players would score points by running over fleeing stick figures called "gremlins". A score of 1-3 points earned the player the rank of Skeleton Chaser; 4-10 points Bone Cracker; 11-20 Gremlin Hunter; and for more than 20 points, a player was dubbed Expert Driver.

Adding to the game’s morbid theme was its equally gruesome cabinet art, created by Pat "Sleepy" Peak. Among the images was a grim reaper standing before two open graves beckoning toward a pair of drivers. The sound effects also added a chilling touch - when the player hit a gremlin, it emitted a tiny electronic scream and was replaced by a cross. The gameplay bore a suspicious resemblance to the 1975 film DeathRace 2000, and most sources report that the game was directly inspired by the movie, though sources at Exidy (including designer Howell Ivy) insist this wasn’t the case. Released in 1976, Death Race created a firestorm of controversy. Paul Jacobs: "Death Race did cause quite a stir, but not until an Associated Press reporter ran a story in Seattle. She had been in a shopping mall and noticed a line of kids extending out the door of the arcade in the mall. She was curious and went to see what was happening and found out they were all waiting in line
to play Death Race. She watched them play and then she concluded that this was a horrible game that showed humans being run over by cars and said the sound when hit resembled a "shrieking
child". Well, every paper in the country picked up the story and that started the controversy. The funny thing is that Death Race was just a "filler"game until our next attraction, Car Polo, was ready for production. It was a modification of Destruction Derby using cars versus skeletons rather than cars versus cars. It required very little development time. We had only released 200 but after the notoriety, we ended up making around 3000 (including PCB sales overseas). Articles about the game were in all major newspapers, plus Newsweek, Playboy, National Enquirer, National Observer. Midnight, the German magazine Stern, and many more. Naally syndicated columnist Bob Greene devoted a column to the game. I was interviewed and featured on the NBC television news magazine show "Weekend" with Lloyd Dobbins and then excerpts were shown the following week on the Today show and the Tonight show. The interview was then featured in a PBS television documentary called "Decades" as an important news event for the year 1977. I did live interviews for many U.S. radio stations and also both CBC (Canada) and BBC (England). It was a story that just wouldn’t die, and Exidy laughed all the way to the bank." The article by Wendy Walker: Most find it humorous New game: Chase Pedestrians SEATTLE (AP) — The latest computerized game at the local bar or poolroom is called "Death Race." For 25 cents, you can pretend you’re running down pedestrians with a car. The game puts the player behind a steering wheel and accelerator pedal and lets him chase "gremlins" across an electronic playing board for 99 seconds. The skeletal figures bear strong resemblances to people. When hit by a car, they emit a shrieking sound — something like the scream of a child — and turn into gravemarkers. "If people get a kick out of running down pedestrians, you have to let them do it," said Paul Jacobs, director of marketing for Exidy, the Palo Alto, Calif., company that designed and distributes the game. "This is the sort of challenge that pricks the person’s mind a little bit." Jacobs said "Death Race" has been distributed nationwide but that it’s a "trade secret" how many there are. He did say the game "hap-
pens to be out most popular game at the time. In fact, the business it attracts far outvalues any of the other games we’ve ever marketed." The game scores point for each figure run down, and when it’s over the player is rated on a scale ranging from a futile "skeleton chaser" to na accomplished "expert driver."
"The name ‘Death Race’ may shock a few people," Jacobs said, but; we find the game humorous." He said it is an offshoot of an Exidy product called "Destruction Derby," in which players crashed cars into one another. "We decided to put a twist on the idea, so we added the graveyard effect and the shrieking sound." Jacobs said the game offended som distributors who refused to contract for it.
Bill Aubbon, director of the Seattle Center arcade, said the game has been in the arcade for about two weeks,"and so far no one has complained."
When first contracted, Aubbon said he wasn’t aware of the game, but "it sounds a little hard to imagine." Checking further, he said he was relieved to find out "those are gremlins that you run down. You’re not supposed to think they’re people." Intended or not, "I suppose they do resemble human forms," Jacobs said. "I don’t think people really get off on thinking they ran down a pedestrian. I think they just like to see how good a marksman they are." Dr. Byrde Meeks, a Seattle psychologist who once worked with aggressive inmates at California’s San Quentin Prison, disagrees.
"A game like that appeals to the morbidity in a person," she said. "That type of preoccupation with violence was common in the prisoners I dealt with. They would have loved the game...
"Someone could argue that people act out their hostilities by playing games, but it has been proven time and time again that violence often comes from modelling." If Exidy thought things would blow over after the AP story, they soon found otherwise as more articles began to appear in the following months. In response, Exidy further emphasized the fact that the game was a harmless diversion and
that they’d been careful to avoid depicting actual pedestrians. "We have one of the best artists in the business." said GM Phil Brooks "If we wanted to have cars running over pedestrians we could have done it to curl your hair." As for the "scream" the game emitted when you ran over a gremlin - that was just a beep. "We could have had screeching of tires, moans, and screams for eight bucks extra.
But we wouldn’t build a game like that. We’re human beings too."
An article from the 12/24/76 Times Picayune: Council Runs Down ‘Hit the Pedestrian’ Game CHICAGO (AP) — The National Safety Council says it is outraged by an electronic, coin operated game which gives players a chance to run run up points by running down figures of pedestrians. The electronic driving game, "Death Race," is described in the winter issue of the council’s Family Safety magazine, released Thursday. Players operate a driving simulator, equipped with steering wheel an accelerator, to chase pedestrian figure across an electronic screen. If a figure is hit, the machine issues a loud shriek and a cross-shaped grave marker pops up to score points. The driver is rated as a "Skeleton Chaser," a "Bone Cracker," a "Gremlin Hunter," or for the top scorer, an "Expert Driver." It costs 25 cents to play. "One of its most insidious and probably unrecognized characteristics is its shift from imaginary visual images of destruction, as you have in TV violence, to actual behavioral actions taken by the player," Fr. Gerald Driessen, behavorial scientist and manager of the council’s research department, said in the article. "The person is no longer just a spectator, but now an actor in the process of creating violence," he said. Dennis Row, safety consultant for the Automobile Club of Southern California, said in ‘the article: "We’re trying to teach drivers how to take evasive maneuvers on the road, like avoiding pedestrians. "And here this morbid game comes along and encourages people to develop the opposite skill — how to hit people." Paul Jacobs, marketing director for Exidy Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., manufactor of "Death Race," said in a telephone interview that the game "is humorous arcade piece requiring dexterity." "It is entirely harmless. There is no blatant violence like in some TV shows," he said. "We feel no remorse in producing the game and have thousands distributed — and a backlog of orders — since it came out eight months ago. There is nothing on the screen that depicts a street or highway." The hysteria exhibited in some of the articles was almost comical. A Tucson Daily Citizen article was titled "If You’ve Got Time to Kill...Game Goal: Road Carnage". A photograph of a young girl playing the game bore the caption "Death race or death wish?" and asked if the game was a harmless fad or "...will chasing down pedestrians on a TV screen now encourage her to cut pedestrians down on real highways later?" The article quotes one arcade manager, who compares the game to Gun Fight, a game whose violence he feels is harmless: "...but that’s the tradition of the Great American West, having a shootout, a duel, in the street. But deliberately running people down - that isn’t an American tradition at all." Another operator explained "When you leave a game room, you don’t go out with a gun in your pocket and shoot your neighbour down. But you do go back to your car and start driving again." Over the years, a number of rumours about the controversy caused by Death Race have appeared, among them: that a bomb threat was called into Exidy headquarters by someone upset with the game and that the game was banned outright in some countries resulting in some foreign operators serving jail time. Paul Jacobs: "I do not know of any country that banned the game (all markets that we sold to around the world accepted it), but I do believe that a Japanese distributor was briefly jailed for selling it. But I’m not so sure it was necessarily for selling the game itself or that he did not follow proper import procedures (pay appropriate import duties, etc.)" As it often the case, the controversy over the game only served to boost sales. As company founder Pete Kaufmann puts it "nobody wanted to buy it, but everybody kept ordering it". Programmer Ed Valleau recalls that after an initial run of about 1,000 units, Death Race had to be brought back into production twice and another 1,000 units were produced. Production had just wound down when the AP article hit and the ensuing brouhaha necessitated another run. Paul Jacobs recalls that about 2,000 uprights were built plus an additional 1,000 PCBs for sale overseas. While its sales were tame by Atari or Midway’s standards, it did provide Exidy with its first real hit yet as well as a steady source of income. In 1975, total sales were about $250,000. In 1976, they increased to $3,000,000. In 1977, Exidy produced a sequel to the game called Super Death Chase, a modified version of the original designed by Arlen Grainger that featured skeletons in place of "gremlins". The game was shown at the 1977 AMOA show, but apparently never made it into full production and only a few units were built.

# 2023-11-26 20:37:38 - official description - THE ARCADE VIDEO-GAME

Developed (unofficially) from 1976 film Death Race 2000, this game is the ancestor that Carmageddon was an update of. Widely thought to be the very first game based on a movie (by people who think of obscure fact). But that honor goes to Shark Jaws. Also the first game to be recalled due to protests.
Tags:
Game Play Innovation is for being recalled because of protests, not for being based on a movie.

Zerothis - # 2001-11-02 23:46:30

display: Monotone

In 1975, Exidy created the game "Destruction Derby". Chicago Coin licensed the game and called it "Demolition Derby". Exidy sold the PC boards to Chicago Coin. Chicago Coin had a large distribution network and did not sell as many games as Exidy had anticipated. In addition, Chicago Coin did not pay Exidy as quickly as Exidy desired. In effect, the market was destroyed for Exidy's Destruction Derby.

Due to these issues, Exidy decided to come up with another product, and the easiest way to do this was to modify an existing product. Howell Ivy took their existing game, Destruction Derby (1975), and changed the image proms of the drone cars in Destruction Derby to 'simple stick figures'. In addition, he made wiring modifications to give the stick figures animation, as if running. Also, he modified the crashed drone proms to the image s of graveyard crosses. Therefore, by making somewhat minor changes to Destruction Derby's existing logic board system, he created a completely different perception of game play and consequently created a new game called Death Race. The game was not inspired by Death Race 2000. The idea was to make minimum changes to an existing product to get something new into the marketplace. He did not anticipate that these minor changes would generate worldwide controversies.

Death Race was one of the first controversial video games. The game was nearly banned for explict content. The controversy over the game's violent theme reached the pages of Midnight and National Enquirer as well as NBC's Weekend, Today, and The Tonight Show. The National Safety Council and Newsweek both referred to the game as 'sick'. The controversy had reportedly started when a AP reporter in Seattle saw children playing the game and thought that the sound effects the pedestrians made when hit sounded like 'shrieking children'. Before the controversy, the game sold only 200 copies - afterwards, Exidy produced about 3,000 (including PCB sales).

When the car crashes into an object (wall or grave stone) AND the gas pedal isn't let go, after about 3 to 4 seconds the car will go right through it. This is normal behavior, and probably isn't seen often in gameplay because normally the player would switch into reverse gear after hitting something.

During development, this game was known as Death Race 98.

Becoro # 2023-11-26 20:09:55 - source

has influenced
Carmageddon (MS-DOS)

prequel of
Super Death Chase (Arcade)

influenced by (old)
Destruction Derby (Arcade)