#020 - Space Race: Asteroid Astro Race

Release Date: July 16, 1973 (July-August 1974 in Japan)

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Racing

Developer(s): Atari

Publisher(s): Atari (licensed to Midway; Namco published in Japan)

Well, it's finally time to return to the arcade, and for the first time in my 1973 coverage. This is mostly due to the lack of arcade games on list up to this point with concrete dates. As a rule, any game that has no specific date is pushed to the end of the list for that year.

The state of the arcade in 1973 doesn't make for an awfully interesting picture; 90% of the games are either direct Pong clones, or variations of Pong. Atari, for instance, made Pong Doubles and Quadrapong as sequels. Pong was even cloned for the nascent Japanese market, with the first two video-game-making Japanese companies, SEGA and Taito, both producing several clones. Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who thought Nintendo was first. Gotta wait till 1977 for them to get in on the Pong-cloning action.

The 10% of games that weren't shamless Pong cash-grabs came from - surprise, surprise - Atari. They produced two wholly unique games in 1973: Gotcha, the source of video gaming's first public controversy, and the earlier of the two - and today's topic, Space Race. Space Race also marks a first, but of a different kind to Gotcha. It's the first racing arcade game. Some make the claim that it's the first ever racing game, but the 101 BASIC Computer Games book features a text-based racing game, Can-Am, that predates Space Race by a year, which is likely the first. 

Can't escape from Pong's shadow.

Space Race is only Atari's second game, officially. Third, if you want to count Computer Space as an Atari product. Most online sources cite Al Alcorn as the sole designer of Space Race, but this is untrue. It appears that the development was handled by both Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn at the least, with possible involvement from Ted Dabney. According to Bushnell, work on Space Race began in 1971 before even Computer Space. The working title for the game at that time was Asteroid. Bushnell came up with the initial design, which was later completed by Alcorn after Bushnell had to drop the project in order to deal with the business management side of Atari. Dabney disputed this story, claiming to have finalised the design himself. Sadly, Dabney would leave Atari prior to Space Race's release due to his falling out with Bushnell, effectively ending his time in the video game industry.

After Bushnell incorporated Atari, he was able to score a contract with Bally Manufacturing for an arcade game. According to The Ultimate History of Video Games, Bushnell pitched the idea of a racing game set in outer space. He likely knew he had the Asteroid design in his back pocket. However, once Alcorn finished the design of Pong, Bushnell tried to offer that instead. Bally weren't interested, and would get the racing game they were initially offered in the form of Space Race in 1973. The game would be manufactured by Midway Manufacturing, whom Bally had owned since 1969, and given its original name: Asteroid.

What goes on next I think sums up the Wild West attitude of the burgeoning arcade scene in the 1970s. Atari, for some undisclosed reason, decided to make Space Race for themselves. As you can imagine, Midway were not overly pleased about this, accusing Atari of breaching contract. They were able to reach a compromise of dropping the 3% royalty payment to Atari stated in the contract. 

While there's a concrete date for Space Race's release, July 16, 1973, dating Asteroid is much harder, as there's very little information about when it was officially released. The only evidence I found suggested that the earliest release date possible may be September '73, which was from someone claiming to have an Asteroid service manual dated to September '73. I've also seen December '73, and even January '74 suggested as release dates for Asteroid, but there's nothing concrete. At the very least, everything suggests that Asteroid was out after Space Race.

Atari also had a go at releasing the game in Japan, which was initially to be handled by the ill-fated Atari Japan division. Due to financial issues and lack of interest, Atari Japan never really got going, and was sold to the Nakamura Manufacturing Company - otherwise known as Namco, marking their entrance into the video game industry. We now had a big three of Japanese arcade games: SEGA, Taito, and Namco. Namco would handle the Japanese release of Space Race, as well as become Atari's partner company, handling all of their arcade releases in Japan from then onwards.

But it doesn't end there! The Japanese release of Space Race generated a clone cabinet from one of the other big three - Taito - called Astro Race. Taito had already got their start in the video game industry cloning Pong, which was exclusively done by now-legendary game designer Tomohiro Nishikado - the man who created Space Invaders. SEGA had no interest in Space Race, being content producing Pong clones and variants. 

I love how imaginative 70s video game art is.

The Japanese side of Space Race is also rather complicated in terms of dating. Most of the common sites I see online have both Namco's licensed release and Taito's Astro Race listed as 1973 releases, the most common date for Astro Race being November '73. However, MobyGames and Wikipedia suggest otherwise for Namco's Space Race, having its release date as August 1974 and July '74 respectively. Wikipedia cites a Japanese book listing all arcade releases in Japan from 1971 - 2005. Bandai-Namco's official history supports the idea of a 1974 release, stating that Namco acquired Atari Japan in 1974, meaning that a 1973 release is highly implausible, if not impossible. I went looking for Astro Race in that Japanese book (finally, a use for my Japanese language skills!) and found Astro Race listed as a November '73 release. The only way I can see that making sense is if Taito imported a US Space Race shortly after its release, and made their clone that way. Unfortunately, I have no way of proving this, and there's no evidence I can find to contradict the November '73 release of Astro Race. All I can provide for now is a plausible explanation for the November '73 date.

Overall, Space Race in all its iterations didn't perform terribly well. According to Ralph Baer's hand-written sales spreadsheets, Asteroid sold about 2,000 units, and Space Race 1,500. By contrast, Pong sold 8,000 units in 1973 alone. The only information on the Japanese side of sales figures was with Astro Race, which apparently sold at least 1,000 units, according to the vgsales Fandom. It's not a wholly reliable figure, as their reference for it doesn't actually mention Astro Race at all - it's just an interview with Nishikado. Namco's Japanese release of Space Race has no sales figures I could find.

Carved out of a pillar of alien emerald.

The cabinet designs across all variants of Space Race are quite varied, and Atari's in particular has a very interesting background to it. Initially, they attempted to manufacture a cabinet in fibreglass, like Computer Space, although with a far more complex design. KLOV has a picture of that design, and it's honestly a very cool design - it looks like it was carved out of an alien rock formation, in contrast to the smooth, space-age terminal of Computer Space. Bushnell claims that they made about 50 of these before deciding that the process of manufacturing this design was too slow and costly. The final design is, frankly, quite awful. It's this dreadfully plain, black cabinet with a white panel where the joysticks are mounted. The only additional graphic is a "Space Race" sticker, written in bold, friendly letters, plastered on the top of the monitor.

Brought back down to Earth...

By comparison, Midway's Asteroid cabinet (as seen in an earlier picture) is like the difference between black & white and colour TV. It's predominately blue, with all different sorts of graphics on the front and side. Rockets on the side, stars and asteroids on the front. I think it looks great. The Japanese cabinets are mixed - there's actually two different designs on Taito's Astro Race fliers. One is the "standard" model - reminiscent of Asteroid, minus the colour, and the other is the "deluxe" model - a strangely-shaped terminal that looks like it could've been on the USS Enterprise. Again, I couldn't find any information on Namco's licensed release.

Taito's other cabinet design.

All of that, and I haven't even gotten into the gameplay yet!

Immediately, there's a problem with trying to play an arcade game as old as Space Race. Like Pong and Computer Space before it, Space Race was designed using discrete components, also known as transistor-to-transistor logic (TTL.) This was the time before microprocessors, meaning that Space Race doesn't technically have a ROM. Typically, for the overwhelming majority of games from this pre-microprocessor era, you have to have access to the cabinet or PCB, otherwise you ain't playing it.

However, this is not the case for Space Race. There exists what is known as the "Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator," or DICE for short. This was a program that was intended to emulate TTL games like Space Race, and it is a game that DICE supports. Sadly, the project has been dead since about 2016, leaving many, many games stuck in limbo. As it stands, it maybe supports about 15-20 games, mostly by Atari or their subsidiary, Kee Games.

DICE is also quite unstable in its current form, technically still a beta program. I've used it for several years, and it has a terrible habit of crashing. On my new laptop, running Windows 11, it crashes on the GUI, not even allowing me to select a game to play. The good news is that there's a couple of workarounds for this, as the issue appears to be with the frontend of the program, and not the games themselves. All I needed to do was run DICE through the command line interface, which is a simple process of:

1. Right click on the folder DICE is located in.
2. Click "Open in Terminal."
3. Type "dice <gamename>"

And the game will run without issue. Alternatively, running DICE in Windows 8 compatibility mode also works. For certain games, like Breakout, the latter solution is preferrable, as the control scheme will need to be adjusted in order to have the best experience. I hate playing paddle games with arrow keys or a d-pad.

The objective of Space Race is fairly simple: two players pilot competing rocket ships with the aim of navigating through the scrolling asteroid field as many times as possible within the time limit. The timer, represented by the white line dividing the screen in half, lasts for a bit over 2 minutes. There's only two directions you can move the rocket ship in: up or down. Anytime you hit an asteroid, the ship's position is reset to its starting point at the bottom of the screen.

While technically a two-player game, Space Race is playable solo without losing out on any of the gameplay. It just becomes a time trial instead of a competitive race, which I don't mind at all.

Personally, I've already had a few years' experience with Space Race. My interest in video game history boomed in 2021 after I purchased Atari Vault on Steam. From there, I kept wanting to look further and further back, and DICE was one of the first places I went to investigate vintage arcade games. I'd still regard Space Race as one of the better games playable through DICE.

The mysterious white line in the middle of the screen is the timer.

At first, you might be thinking "Hmm, this reminds me of Frogger." Well, you're not the only one. Most other sites and reviews I've seen discuss Space Race have said the same thing, that Space Race is like a simpler version of Konami's Frogger, or Activision's Freeway on the Atari 2600. The concept is functionally the same in all these games.

I've always liked the sound design of Space Race in a strange, endearing sort of way. DICE doesn't emulate sound in most games, but Space Race is one of the few that DICE does have sound for. The primitive, 70s space-age analog beeps and boops rise and lower in pitch as the ships move up and down the screen, and there's a separate sound channel for each ship. In a base sort of way, the rising pitch as you get closer and closer to completing a lap conveys a sense of tension and excitement.

Oooh, that's not gonna end well...

At first, one might think that the game's "asteroid field" is generated randomly. However, once you've played Space Race enough times like I have, you'll probably begin to notice patterns in the asteroid field. In fact, it's actually a static field - not random at all. There are times where it's possible to get stuck in a kind of loop, where you'll be forced to maneuver through the same pattern of asteroids over and over, which is a bit annoying, as that pattern is usually a slow one. Conversely, it can be seen as a positive design choice, as it allows for learning the playfield, learning the patterns of what asteroids are going to be where and when. I've used this to great effect, allowing me to take informed risks to get ahead. Space Race is most rewarding when you play aggressively.

I had to play around with OBS for a little while to get it to record properly. The visuals were freezing in my recording attempts, but the sound was still playing. During this time, I managed a best score of 17 laps. I can't remember what my best score was the last time I played, but I think it was around 16. I think 18 or maybe 19 is probably the highest possible score, both would require perfect play, not getting hit once, and getting good patterns. Once I got OBS to work, I was still unable to get to 18, coming agonisingly short of the mark in one run.

Time to take a pit stop and do the scores.

Time Played: 30 minutes (for this article)

Difficulty: 3/10 (Easy)

I've never found Space Race to be particularly challenging. It's very simple, and controls well enough to make dodging asteroids easy. There's viable risk-taking options that up the challenge a little.

Gameplay: 11

I honestly think Space Race is a pretty well-designed, simple arcade game. One can go either way on the static asteroid field - it could be viewed a limiting variety and challenge. I see it as a boon, as it provides opportunity to learn the playfield and identify what cycles allow for fast movement, and the ones that force slow movement. That then provides strategic options, in taking risk to get ahead of a bad cycle, or even slowing down slightly to get into a good, fast cycle. Personally, I think the static playfield was an intentional choice, and it seems to me like a decent amount of testing went into the placement of each asteroid.

Controls: 6

Space Race has a very simple control scheme, but one that works very well. The pace at which the rocket ships travel feels just about right; it's not too fast to make the game too easy, and not too slow to make it feel sluggish to control. There's only so much one can do with a control scheme such as this, but what's been done works well.

Sound: 6

I get to talk about sound! As mentioned earlier, I actually quite like the sound design of Space Race. Yes, it's silly beeps and boops, but its the way they're implemented that I like. Having a sound channel for each ship is neat, but the fact that the game has dynamic sound is kind of innovative for its time. Having the pitch of the sounds shift up and down, according to where the ships are on the playing field, and especially having it rise the closer you get to completing a lap I think adds to the overall tension and excitement of the game.

Visual: 2

It's not all positive for Space Race. This game is ugly, and so is its (Atari) cabinet. I've never liked the way the ships were drawn. They look... inappropriate. Having the timer be a white line directly in the centre of the screen, while making sense to divide it into two so that each player has a half, is distracting and breaks what little immersion the game has to offer. It's really just overall not nice to look at. 

Functionality: 5

I've never run across any glitches (aside from OBS not liking DICE), so full marks here.

Accessibility: 4

The only thing I'll knock points off for here is that you're likely not to see a cabinet of this out in the wild, meaning that emulation is the only way to play it for now. What it does get points for is its incredible simplicity, meaning that it's a very easy game to understand and play for almost anyone.

Fun Factor: 10

It's fun. I enjoy it. Space Race is always a good time to come back to, even if I won't necessarily seek it out in favour of more complex experiences. It's simple and short enough that I can come back, play it for 10-15 minutes, try for a high score, and then leave it.

Space Race ends its course with a score of 44 which, after calculations, earns it a podium finish as 3rd overall in the C-tier, after a photo finish. I'm actually a little surprised - it did better than I expected. That's the second C-tier game of 1973.

I'm only likely to cover one more arcade game for 1973, which will be a Gaiden article covering Gotcha. That game's interesting enough to warrant it, unlike all the Pong clones. For the rest of 1973, it's back to text-based games, but we've got some interesting ones coming up very soon.

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