Speed Freak

Back in the early days of arcades, before polygons hit the scene with 1984's amazing I, Robot, arcade games were manufactured with two different types of displays: raster and vector. Raster displays were made up of the colorful little dots we know as "sprites", whereas vector displays were made up of lines and dots, allowing them to display a form of primitive 3d. Though Star Wars and Tempest are undoubtedly the most famous vector games, coming from Atari, other companies also threw their hat into the vector arena, such as Vectorbeam, who had a short run of vector-only games, starting with 1977's Space War, and including today's game, Speed Freak. Speed Freak is a first person driving game, providing simple but clean and aesthetically pleasing landscapes to drive through.

Like the much later Outrun, the goal is not to win the race by outrunning other cars, but to get as far as you can without running out of time. The controls ain't Gran Turismo, being that you only have a gas pedal, 4 gears, and steering, all working in a fairly arcadey fashion, but they serve their purpose well. The course you drive on is randomly generated, and has both roadblocks and other cars to avoid, as well as bits of background color such as hitchhikers, trees, cows, and birds. Speed Freak is a simple game, but a pleasurable one. The minimalist graphics are actually quite soothing, mimicking a night drive through the desert, and the fact that crashes don't kill you also makes the whole experience more relaxing, though you do get to see a neat explosion, as seen below.