Gran Trak 10

About Gran Trak 10

Gran Trak 10 is a racing video game developed by Atari, Inc. through its subsidiary Cyan Engineering, and released by Atari for arcades in May 1974. The player drives a car along a race track viewed from above, avoiding walls of pylons and trying to pass as many checkpoints as possible before time runs out. The game is controlled with a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals, and a gear stick, and the car crashes and spins if it hits a pylon.

Gran Trak 10 was developed during a time of several internal changes at Atari; as a result communication problems led Atari to not accurately track the expense of manufacturing the game. It was initially sold to distributors for a net loss of US$100 per cabinet; although this flaw was fixed it contributed to a total loss of $500,000 for the company that fiscal year, placing Atari in financial difficulties. The game itself was successful, and led to several versions of the game being produced in 1974 by Atari and its subsidiary Kee Games, including a smaller cabinet version titled Trak 10 and a two-player version titled Gran Trak 20, as well as numerous later racing games. Gran Trak 10 was the first arcade car driving video game, though Atari had released the spaceship racing game Space Race in 1973, and a simple racing game, Wipeout, was included with the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey console.