Nürburgring 1

Nürburgring 1 is an arcade game developed by Dr. Reiner Foerst and released in 1975.[1] It is recognized as the world's first first-person racing video game and inspired the development of Night Driver.[1][2]

Nürburgring 1
Developer(s)Dr. Reiner Foerst
Platform(s)Arcade
Release1975
Genre(s)Racing game 
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

The game's arcade cabinet contained a steering wheel, shifter, pedals, and other controls in the form of buttons.[1] The player drove along a twisting roadway bordered by white guardrails.[1] The lower portion of the screen showed the speedometer, mileage and other indicators.[1]

The game counted crashes and punished them with a time penalty.[3] The game ended after 90 seconds, or by driving across the finish line.[3]

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.[1] 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.[1] The resulting arcade game had no CPU, and instead used 28 separate circuit boards.[1]

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.[1] 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.[1]

Sequels

Several other versions of the game were created.[1] The second installment in the series had motorcycle handlebars, while the third was in full color with selectable backgrounds.[1] 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.[1]

References
  1. Torchinsky, Jason. "Meet The Doctor-Engineer Who Basically Invented The Modern Racing Game". Jalopnik. Retrieved 2017-07-29.
  2. Stuart, Keith (2017-05-26). "The 10 most influential driving games – in pictures". the Guardian. Retrieved 2017-07-29.
  3. (c)2000..2007, CYBERYOGI Christian Oliver(=CO=) Windler. "Reiner Foerst's Nürburgring - The world first 3D arcade car race game, made in Germany!". weltenschule.de. Retrieved 2017-07-29.
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