These Are The First Identifiable Cars To Ever Appear In A Nintendo Game

Have you ever wondered what the first actually-identifiable cars that appeared in a Nintendo video game were? Sure you have; you’re human. Recently, a representative from UNESCO’s World Heritage Center met me near the dumpster behind a Harris Teeter and told me that they needed me to find out the answer to this very question. He also had to conduct a strangely invasive physical exam and needed to have my wallet sent to some special UN inspectors, which struck me as odd, but the credentials he briefly showed me on his phone seemed to check out.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that I believe I do have the answer to the question, and I’m also happy to say I find the answer very satisfying. I’m sure you’re dying to know as well, though I suppose the top image already gave away the answer, but let’s still get into it.

I believe the first actually-identifiable, real-world cars to appear in a Nintendo video game were in a game called Oil Panic, a handheld game in Nintendo’s Game and Watch series that was about a gas station/lube shop in a very poor state of repair. Really, this place probably should have been shut down by some sort of local inspectors; it’s an accident waiting to happen.

Before we get to what the cars are, specifically, let’s talk about the type of game this was. Nintendo was a company that had been around since 1889, making traditional Japanese playing cards, and by 1977 had started making video games, simple pong-like games that plugged into a TV.

Sometime around 1979, Nintendo’s head of their Research & Development 1 lab (there were just two people in that lab), Gunpei Yokoi, noticed a businessman on a train idly playing with a calculator, which gave him the idea to develop small, handheld games with LCD screens that used calculator technology.

These became the Game & Watch series, with the first one released in 1980. These were a huge hit, and in 1982 the series was expanded to have games that utilized two screens for more complex gameplay. The first of these was Oil Panic.

These dual-screen Game & Watch handhelds just played one basic game like the ones that preceded them, but allowed for a larger play area and new game dynamics thanks to the two screens. These dual-screen games also were the first place that Nintendo used their now-iconic +-shaped joypad, which first showed up on their Game & Watch adaptation of Donkey Kong. I actually have that one:

Anyway, back to Oil Panic. Like all Game & Watch games, the display used LCD screens that showed their graphics with two layers: a printed background, in color, and over that a segmented LCD display.

These weren’t pixel-based screens; every image that shows on the screen is actually a pre-defined segment, and all the display does is turn it on or off. You can see above every possible segment turned on, showing all characters in the game, all objects, in all the possible positions. That’s all these screens could display. They’re more like animated neon signs than computer displays as we know them today.

The limitations of these displays defined the look of the moving graphics, which gave birth to a simple, unique design vocabulary for the moving objects, which is sort of reminiscent of early 1900s cartoons.

The main character in Oil Panic is this guy, a lube shop worker who needs to catch eternally-dripping oil from the shop’s incredibly poorly-maintained oil distribution pipes. I love the way Nintendo designers used that + shape to define teeth! Donkey Kong used that, too.

Anyway, let’s get to the cars. The cars in question are not in the moving LCD segments layer, but rather in the screenprinted background image. And they’re pretty iconic cars, easy to identify. Look:

They’re on the bottom screen, next to their owners who are in perpetual danger of getting oil dumped all over them. There’s a blue Beetle on the left, which looks like a 1962 or 1963 Beetle (based on the three-segment taillights and the smaller license plate light housing), and next to it is a red Mini, and based on the grille shape, I think it’s somewhere between a 1967 and 1976 model, but I can’t be too certain.

Still, these are absolutely identifiable cars, and I believe this is the first anything Nintendo made that features real-world automobiles.

Here’s a video of the gameplay of Oil Panic, if you’d like to see:

…and here’s an emulator you can play right in your browser, if you feel like really doing the research.

This lube shop kind of reminds me of the Pagoda at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but it’s clearly in horrible repair. Think of the volume of oil this shop is wasting with those constantly leaky pipes! This place is an environmental and economic nightmare.

Still, it’s pretty fun. I bought one of these for a friend in the early 2000s when they were still cheap. They’re pretty expensive now, but they’re very fun artifacts to have, if you’re into this sort of thing. If you collect Mini or Beetle stuff, you have a reason to pick one up!