A driving game sets off the first national panic over violence

What happened

The machine itself was crude even for 1976: a black-and-white screen, a steering wheel, and stick figures that scattered as the car approached. Running one over produced a scream and left a small cross on the asphalt. Exidy insisted the targets were gremlins rather than people, a distinction that persuaded nobody who had looked at the cabinet artwork. The game was loosely associated with a recent film about a murderous cross-country race, which supplied both a marketing hook and an argument for its critics.

Condemnation came from traffic safety organizations, newspaper columnists and psychologists quoted at length, and a network television news program devoted a segment to it. Some operators pulled their machines while others found the coverage brought players in. Production was small, and the game would be a footnote if not for what it exposed. There was no ratings system, no trade association ready to answer, and no research to cite, so the argument was conducted entirely through anecdote and moral assertion.

The world at the time

American concern about media violence in 1976 was focused on television, where congressional hearings and network self-censorship were already routine. Arcades occupied an uneasy position in many towns, still tied to the gambling reputation pinball had carried for decades, and municipal licensing gave officials real leverage over which machines a location could hold.

What it changed

No regulation resulted and no industry response was organized, so the same argument arrived unresolved with each step toward graphical realism. Almost two decades later, digitized fighters and full-motion video finally produced congressional hearings and a ratings board, and the reasoning on both sides was recognizably the same as in 1976.