As Electronic Handheld Games Ruled The 70s And 80s, One Brand Kept It Real With Electro-Mechanical Car-Racing Weirdness

Back in 1976, the pop-culture zeitgeist was dominated by Dino De Laurentiis’ King Kong remake and Rocky in theaters, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio, Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley on television, and all things bicentennial everywhere else as the good ol’ USA celebrated its 200th birthday. As for car-toydom, 1976 was all about Hot Wheels, Evel Knievel, and slot car sets from Tyco and Aurora. And for the first time, auto racing play went electronic, with Mattel’s Auto Race.

I never knew Auto Race existed as a kid; I always thought the first electronic handhelds were Mattel’s Football and Baseball games. I was, however, keenly aware of Tomy’s electro-mechanical games that appeared in the years after Mattel made portable electronic gaming a massive hit with kids and adults alike.

I did not appreciate these toys at the time.

Like Mattel’s sports games, Auto Race had the player maneuver tiny LEDs to simulate on-field or on-track action. There wasn’t much fidelity to any real sporting, and the “resolution,” for lack of a better word, was ridiculously low; a screen might have three columns of ten LEDs, for example. And yet, the gameplay was lively, and electronic sounds and seven-segment LED scorekeeping felt like futuristic stuff.

Decidedly unfuturistic was Tomy’s Digital Derby, which was most assuredly not digital. Kid-me wondered why the heck Tomy was bothering with a mechanical simulation of an electronic game some two years into the electronic revolution, but there it was: a noisy plastic box of wires, gears, film strips, and light bulbs that simulated a top-down, endless-road driving video game.

As the video below shows, Digital Derby racing is a straightforward if slightly weird affair. The steering wheel slides the image of your car from lane to lane, and your only job is to avoid the slower cars that you overtake endlessly. “Collide” with a car, and the action stops for a moment as a bulb lights up a translucent red “explosion.” Here’s where it gets really interesting: each lane is a looped film strip with the opponent cars printed on it. The speed of the strips is controlled via the N-1-2-3 lever, which, when applied skillfully, allows you to open a gap between side-by-side cars that would otherwise represent an unavoidable wreck.

And what exactly is going on inside Digital Derby to achieve this? Behold!

Yeah, that is a lot. Kid-me would have never gotten that thing back together once curiosity took hold and the screwdrivers came out. Adult-me is very impressed at the ingenuity of the design and how well it works, and I find the gameplay’s funky analogness that kid-me scoffed at to be fascinating and charming today.

Even as Tomy released solid-state electronic games in the early 80s and later, the brand still moved ahead with electro-mechanical driving games. Here’s Turbo Dashboard from 1982, which – true to its name – is equal parts driving game and dashboard simulator.

The gameplay on this one isn’t really a game at all, you just freestyle your way through an endlessly rolling street scene projected onto a curved screen behind a frosted panel that hides the workings within. There’s a car to avoid, but if you don’t swerve to avoid it, you’ll just roll right over it. If you want to teach kids that driving requires no responsibility and there are no consequences, this is your toy.

Amusingly, the dash’s “LED” representations are just openings in the display panel, with colored flats that move into position behind the openings to simulate LEDs lighting. The chunky ignition key turns the game on, and the large button next to it resets the trip meter. The display layout is entirely fanciful, but the Turnin’ Turbo Dashboard is trying very hard to remind you of a real car:

Yeah, that’s a Porsche 911. Obviously.

The most fascinating Tomy electro-mechanical driving game to me is Daring Driver from the 1982 Mini Arcade series. I love that it’s styled as a miniature stand-up cabinet, and the mechanism inside is truly inspired. And electronic! There’s an actual circuit board inside that controls LEDs flashing in sequence to simulate road markers at night. Increasing speed is simulated by the flashing sequence speeding up. The LEDs shine onto a curved mirror that appears to bend the “road” left and right as you steer. If you crash, a moire pattern is created mechanically and projected onto the screen to indicate fire. Or an explosion? Use your imagination.

… And that wraps up this brief look at just a few Tomy electro-mechanical games. Tomy made many others representing other sports subjects, each as ingenious as the last. Surely it would have been easier just to, you know, make electronic games, but would they be anywhere near as memorable or imagination-provoking as these contraptions? I don’t think so.

Top graphic images: eBay sellers