software.wikisort.org - Video_game

Nürburgring 1 is an arcade game developed by Dr. Reiner Foerst and released in 1976.[2] It was first demonstrated at the German IMA show in Spring 1976.[1] It is recognized as the world's earliest first-person racing video game and inspired the development of Night Driver.[2][3]

Nürburgring 1
Developer(s)	Dr. Reiner Foerst
Publisher(s)	Dr. Reiner Foerst
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release	DE: Spring 1976[1]
Mode(s)	Single-player

Gameplay

The game's arcade cabinet contained a steering wheel, shifter, pedals, and other controls in the form of buttons.[2] The player drove along a twisting roadway bordered by white guardrails.[2] The lower portion of the screen showed the speedometer, mileage and other indicators.[2]

The game counted crashes and punished them with a time penalty.[4] The game ended after 90 seconds, or by driving across the finish line.[4]

Development

The game was created by Dr. Foerst not out of a desire to develop a video game, but in order to make a working driving simulation.[2] Unable to find a way to cheaply scale down the earliest driving simulators by Volkswagen and BP, he decided to build one based on the technology he found inside a Pong video game machine.[2] The resulting arcade game had no CPU, and instead used 28 separate circuit boards.[2]

The game Night Driver was inspired when the lead programmer, Dave Shepperd, saw a picture of the arcade cabinet in a flyer that had a small portion of the screen visible.[2] As Atari was much better at miniaturizing the game idea to a single board, they ultimately capitalized on most of the would-be success of Nürburgring 1 and caused it to become obscure and largely unknown.[2]

Sequels

Several other versions of the game were created.[2] The second installment in the series had motorcycle handlebars, while the third was in full color with selectable backgrounds.[2] Other versions of the third game in the series had cabinets that swiveled back and forth on a turntable, as well as banked back and forth.[2]

References

---