Side Track

Side Track is a 1979 maze chase game, with trains instead of anthrophomorphic circles. It comes to us via Exidy, the Rockstar games of their time. Exidy brought us the first video game controversy via Death Race, a rather crude driving game where you had to run over pedestrians. This didn't cause quite as huge of an uproar as Night Trap or GTA did, but the game was still banned and removed from many pizza parlors and arcades. Side Track doesn't contain any reckless vehicular manslaughter, but it does have trains. Evil trains and good trains. Of course, you play the good train, trying to make your way around the map and pick up as many passengers as you can before your inveitable demise at the hands of the "killer engine". You can switch tracks, and speed up, but there are no powerups whatsoever. You do get more cars the longer you drive around the track, but that just makes it more difficult to survive, as you race against death to a bloopy, neverending dirge. Seeing as the existential dilemmas of locomotives are not exactly an intriguing subject to most people, Side Track was promptly forgotten.