Nürburgring 1 is an arcade video game developed by Dr. Reiner Foerst and released 1976.[2] It was first demonstrated at the German IMA show in Spring 1976.[1] It is recognized as the world's earliest first-personracing video game and inspired the development of Atari, Inc.'s Night Driver.[2][3]
The game's arcade cabinet contains a steering wheel, shifter, pedals, and other controls in the form of buttons.[2] The player drives along a twisting roadway bordered by white guardrails.[2] The lower portion of the screen shows the speedometer, mileage, and other indicators.[2] The game counts crashes and punishes them with a time penalty.[4] It ends after 90 seconds or after driving across the finish line.[4]
The game was created by Dr. Foerst not out of a desire to develop a video game, but in order to make a working driving simulation.[2] Unable to find a way to cheaply scale down the earliest driving simulators by Volkswagen and BP, he decided to build one based on the technology he found inside a Pong video game machine.[2] The resulting arcade game has no CPU and contains 28 separate circuit boards.[2]
Dave Shepperd, a programmer at Atari, Inc., saw a picture of the arcade cabinet in a flyer that had a small portion of the screen visible, which inspired him to create Night Driver.[2] Atari was able to miniaturize the game to a single board and ultimately capitalized on Nürburgring 1 while that game remained largely unknown.[2]
Several other versions of Nürburgring 1 were created.[2] The second installment in the series has motorcycle handlebars, while the third is in full color with selectable backgrounds.[2] Other versions of the third game in the series have cabinets that swivel back and forth on a turntable, as well as bank back and forth.[2]
