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:

Arcade Cabs in the Wild - Galaxian

Galxian

Location: Buzz's Coin Laundry Sherman Oaks

I found this cab at a local laundramat. It's not in the best shape, but the control panel and marque are still looking great. I played rounds while I waited for my clothes to dry and the thing still plays like a dream.




The side panels are scratched and faded, but it's still pretty cool too see the original side are, so many cabs now a days are refirbs with generic side art.



The front panel art is in a little bit better shape. The cool "invader" design still enticing to drop in a few more quarters.



check out the old Midway logo on the coin box. This hardware must all be original. Incredible!




The Joystick and fire buttons are a little grimey, but they still worked fine.



Like the joystick, the instructions have about 30 years of grime built up, but it's fascinating to see the instructions, this might be the only time I've seen an intact galaxian instruction decal.




My favorite part of this cab is the "Start Game" font. I just think it look so cool



From the Galaxian wikipedia entry:

Galaxian expanded on the formula pioneered by Space Invaders. As in the earlier game, Galaxian featured a horde of attacking aliens that exchanged shots with the player. In contrast to Space Invaders, however, Galaxian added an element of drama by having the aliens periodically make kamikaze-like dives at the player's ship.

The gameplay was relatively simple. Swarm after swarm of alien armies attacked the player's ship that moved left and right at the bottom of the screen. The ship could only fire sparingly by default, but rearmed instantly when an enemy was hit. The player would defeat one swarm, only to have it replaced by another more aggressive and challenging army in the next screen. A plain and repetitive starfield scrolled in the background.

Galaxian was very successful for Namco and introduced several "firsts". Although true color (as opposed to a color overlay for a game that was otherwise black and white) began appearing as early as 1975, Galaxian took graphics a step further with multi-colored animated sprites and explosions, a crude theme song, different colored fonts for the score and high score, more prominent background "music" and the scrolling starfield, and graphic icons that showed the number of ships left and how many rounds the player had completed. These elements combined to create a look/feel that would set the standard for many other 1980s arcade games such as Pac-Man.

The "official" highest score in a game of Galaxian was achieved by Gary Whelan of Manchester, England on 13 August 2004 when he managed to amass a total of 399,290 points.