Death Race. The first game to corrupt America's youth and corrode our great society.

So my buddy from the college days has a pretty great weekly video podcast called the Totally Rad Show. The show has made him a fairly internet famous, even allowing him to rub elbows with some of my heroes from the world of games industry journalism.

At any rate, I was on the phone today with my brother who was also a friend of Jeff's back in the old days. Anywhoo...my brother and I were talking about a recent episode of Jeff's show in which they discussed the recent 'drivin and shootin' film Death Race.

In their review they were talking about how it would be such a great video game. Actually Jeff invited me to see this movie with him, and it's too bad that I didn't go or else I could have made the joke that I'd been saving for just such an event. Which is basically that I'd say "not another video game movie!"

But this is a pretty obscure reference, which I'm not even sure Jeff would have understood, despite the fact that he is about the only other person I know of who can keep up with my constant nerd references and inside jokes.

So OK...keep up. Back in the 70s Roger Corman, famed horror film producer put out a little flick called Death Race 2000. This is the same flick which I would assume inspired the recent Death Race I haven't seen the newer version, but it's a safe bet to assume it's basically just "asplody" than the original but still just as "fun".

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Back in the 70s a little company called exidy created an Arcade machine based on the film which was simply called Death Race. By today's standards the game is primitive, basically imagine Atari's Gran Trak 10 with little stick Zombies for you to drive over:




However, Exidy helped to add to the game's gruesome atmosphere of the game by housing it in an arcade cabinet covered with creepy images of zombies, hot rods, and skeletons:



Long before the days of Mortal Kombat and Night Trap helped bring about the ESRB or Grand Theft Auto poured us some "Hot Coffee", Death Race was appearing on 60 minutes. Exidy tried to subdue the Parental outcry by claiming that the stick figures weren't humans but rather "ghouls", but eventually the game would have to be recalled.

So now flash forward to 2008. Ryan sees a preview for the new Death Race and thinks to himself, "ha it's another damn video game movie! too bad no one would get that joke." But maybe now, maybe my dear readers...you to can make that joke when you start seeing the film's DVD release being advertised at midnight on Spike TV. And like me you can look around hoping in vain that someone else will "get it".

Until then enjoy this video from the you tubes of some hot AZN CHIK and a NECK Bearded Bro playing death race around the :59 sec mark: