Death Race is a 1976 arcade game from Exidy, and one of the most notorious titles of gaming's earliest years. Loosely inspired by the film Death Race 2000, it had players drive over on-screen figures — called "gremlins" by the makers — which turned into little gravestones on the track when struck. The crude monochrome graphics left plenty to the imagination, and that was exactly the problem.

The game triggered one of the first public moral panics about video game violence, drawing television news coverage and condemnation from safety campaigners who read the figures as pedestrians. That controversy, more than the simple gameplay, is why Death Race is remembered today: it marked the start of a debate about violence in games that has never really gone away. As an actual game it is primitive even by 1976 standards, but its historical weight is hard to overstate.