One of my favorite old school arcade racing games is actually a pretty technically interesting one, but not because it featured advanced, bleeding-edge technology. In fact, it was the exact opposite; the game was Sega/Gremlin’s overhead racing game called Monaco GP, and it was notable because it was very likely the last arcade game made that didn’t use a central processing unit (CPU), but rather did everything with discrete electronics. If you think of the CPU as the “brain” of a computer, this machine, like the earliest arcade machines such as Pong, was, well, brainless. Still, I don’t hold that against it, as it was good, simple fun and I always really liked the cabinets.
Plus, there was one at this bowling alley in LA my wife and I used to go to during a strange several months-long attempt to get to be better at bowling, for some reason.
The cabinet you see up top there, the sit-down one, was pretty uncommon; the most often seen one was a really appealing and diminutive stand-up cabinet, and there also seems to have been an odd cocktail table version, which I’ve never seen:
I’d love to find one of the little stand-up cabinets! I hardly need more crap down here in my basement, but I’d make room.
Because these machines work on discrete logic instead of a program running on a CPU, there’s not really a good way to emulate Monaco GP on modern machines. These machines eight separate printed circuit boards: two for game logic, one for sound, one for the CRT display, one for the LED 7-segment numerical displays for time and scoring (this would never be done like this on a CPU-based game, really), an accelerator board, and two backplane boards to connect it all together.
You pretty much have to play it on the original hardware, which also makes it a bit more special, if you want the original experience.
Here’s a video of the game in action so you can get an idea what it was like:
That’s a very straight racetrack, more like a commute than a race, and like many of these early driving games, it seemed to emulate a sort of digital simulated treadmill, but there was enough extra traffic and complications in the game (ice, night stages, bottlenecks) to keep things challenging.
I’m not sure why the memory of this thing popped in my head, but it was clearly important, so now I’m making sure you remember this old machine, too.
You’re welcome.
There’s one at the pinball museum in Vegas. Totally worth it. Works!
The cocktail version is so rare that only three are known to exist.
https://www.vernimark.com/arcades/videogioco/monaco-gp/
The arcade at the Salem Willows in Salem, MA used to (might still) have a few electromechanical arcade games. I remember a submarine hunting one I think was called “Periscope Attack” or similar and an overhead view racing one that was a either a painted drum or a belt running on two drums very much like Monaco GP, but analog. The player operated a model or painted plastic (I can’t remember) Grand Prix style car side to side with a steering wheel and foot throttle (don’t remember if there was a shifter, but if there was, it would have been a Hi/Low that controlled drum/belt speed, though the drum/belt spun faster as the game went on). When you crashed into a car on the drum/belt, a fire sound effect would play and a still shot of a burning GP car would be projected onto the screen. I don’t think the machine was even capable of taking quarters, but I can’t remember if it was a dime or nickel to play in the ’80s. It was a good place to deposit non quarter change. If I had to guess, I’d think it was from the ’60s. They also had the even older vintage stuff, like the love tester and a fortune teller that would hand out fortunes like the machine in “Big”, except it was a woman in garb that would be considered a racist depiction of a traveling culture originating somewhere in central Asia, but with a nickname misattributed to originating from a country in north Africa.
Holy crap I must be old because I remember that racing game…
Wow, that shiny jumpsuit paired with high heel boots is……..a look.
There it is! The machine that ate every bit of money I’d receive from my parents along with whatever amount of my own I had brought when we used to do these family reunions at a hotel in Rochester, MN. It was the only cabinet version of the game I had ever saw and felt like a top-down version of Colecovision’s “Turbo” that a friend of mine had.
Annnnd suddenly feeling nostalgic for Atari Night Driver…
“Because these machines work on discreet logic instead of a program running on a CPU, there’s not really a good way to emulate Monaco GP on modern machines.”
You can probably emulate that on a Motorola DynaTac. Just because it has 8 different boards doesn’t mean it’s complicated. A modern processor could emulate all of that and not even realize it’s doing any work at all.
https://arcadespot.com/game/monaco-gp/
I remember there was a cabinet version of one of these at the neighborhood pizza joint that my dad used to take me to. I played the hell outta that thing. On a recent trip to vegas, I found one again, and all of those memories came rushing back. FYI: the best thing in Vegas is the “pinball hall of fame” – it’s on S. Las Vegas Blvd adjacent to the airport. It has literally hundreds of pinball and old arcade games, still mostly a quarter to play, and no entry fee. Best way to put money in a machine in Vegas, and not feel the usual pangs of self loathing & regret.
I second that museum recommendation- so many games I played as a kid in there.
Monaco GP was great… but the machine that really ate all my quarters back in the day was Cyber Sled…. but none other than good ol’ Namco. It was only fun when you had two people to go at it. The best part was the loud-ass speakers in the headrest of the seats.
While it wasn’t technically a racing game, there are parallels to race games in that you operated a vehicle (a “sled”) around a large course looking to seek and destroy your opponent with weapons. Somewhat similar to the mode in mario kart where you have to pop the other drivers’ balloons.
Gameplay-wise this game always reminded me of Spy Hunter. Or maybe it’s the other way around since Monaco GP came out a few years before.
Exactly what I thought, pretty much Spy Hunter without the weapons van.
I’m constantly amazed at how much arcade games advanced in the 8 years I was playing them. I went from Pole Position as a kid at the pizza parlor to that damned holographic time-travel cowboy game that killed me in 30 seconds every play.
My personal favorite was GTI club- handbrake turns in a little mini around European streets… if I had the space and money, that’s the arcade game I’d be shopping for.
GTI Club is so good! Sadly I never managed to get it running on emulators, and it’s not like I haven’t tried. I’d spend some cash on the actual arcade if it wasn’t so big. Old arcades are still cheap in my neck of the woods, a friend of mine built his arcade room practicaly for free. As arcades started to close down in my hometown, about 15 years ago, he went around and offered to take some cabinets, and people actually took the offer because it meant less work getting them to storage (or to the junkyard).
Whoa..Time Traveler. I hadn’t thought about that in years.
I feed too much money to these. In my area all they had were the sit down ones. There is on a theme park arcade not too far from my house.
If your dream is to lead Team Divco at Monaco, one of the cabinet version might be perfect….
I don’t know, I feel like the sit-down version would have at least tripled the Walter Mitty factor. But I was never a big arcade guy, except at college when I would cycle through Frogger, Vanguard and Tempest in the basement of the student center.
Likewise. I’d end up spending all my laundry quarters.
“did everything with discreet electronics … Because these machines work on discreet logic”
Discrete, please. Unless they’re trying to remain unnoticed. 🙂
There was a Monaco GP machine at the indoor soccer arena back when I was a kid. Mom and dad never wanted to give me any quarters for it though.
Wreckfest is my current favorite arcade-y, sim-ish racer. It is made by the studio that did Flatout and features some excellent banger racing.
I want to try Wreckfest so bad. Alas, being an adult means I don’t really have time for more than a game at a time, and I’m currently doing a playthrough of Gran Turismo 4, now that I finally have a computer that can run PCSX2 properly. And because I can’t really spend that much time playing the one game I’m playing at any given time, I think it will be a few months until I finish GT4.