Genre: Driving

Driving games put you behind the wheel of a car or a motorbike, and on the Atari 2600 they show how much designers could do with very little. The console cannot scale or rotate graphics, so a road has to be built from coloured lines and a few moving shapes, drawn from above, from the side or as a simple road narrowing into the distance.
Controls varied too. Some early Atari games used paddle controllers, whose dial works well as a steering wheel. Street Racer was one of the nine games available when the console launched in 1977, and Rob Fulop’s Night Driver (1980) turned the paddle into a first-person drive through the dark. Most later games switched to the joystick, with the fire button often working as the accelerator.
Activision raised the bar. David Crane’s Dragster (1980) was one of the company’s first four games, and his Grand Prix (1982) showed large, shaded, multicoloured cars. Larry Miller’s Enduro (1983) fitted day, night, snow and fog into a 4 KB cartridge. Atari’s Pole Position (1983) brought Namco’s arcade racer home, qualifying lap included, and Sega’s Spy Hunter (1984) needed two joysticks held side by side in a plastic holder: one for steering, the second for its extra fire button.
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