Space Race (Game)

Space Race

GAME » on July 15, 1973

Atari's second arcade game was a 2-player black and white spaceship flying competition.

Played with joysticks that only move up and down, two players compete to move their ship from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen as a star field scrolls by. Players must avoid colliding with the "meteors and asteroids" that crisscross as they travel from the left and right sides of the screen (along monitor scanline trajectories). Reaching the top earns the player a point, while colliding with a star resets the player at the bottom of the screen. The player with the most points at the end of the time limit is the winner. Though the game has no special single player mode, Atari suggested in its operator's manual that a solitary player can race against the clock to set their own personal high score or control both ships at the same time to test their skills. Space Race was the second arcade game produced by Atari after Pong. Because of its name, many have declared Space Race as a precursor to the racing game genre, but it has less to do with game but rather a timed competition. It is probably better attributed as a forerunner to games like Activision's Freeway (Game) or even Frogger (Game).

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