Revs

Revs was written by Geoff Crammond and published by Acornsoft in 1984. It originated on the BBC Micro, and this record covers the Commodore 64 conversion. Its historical weight is not in question: at a moment when racing games meant arcade driving past colourful scenery, Revs attempted an actual simulation.

Crammond was a physicist by training and approached the subject accordingly. The car in Revs has modelled suspension behaviour, weight transfer, loss of grip and response to surface conditions. It can be spun, and the skill lies in not letting that happen. On an 8-bit machine with a few tens of kilobytes of memory, achieving that in 1984 was remarkable.

The game simulates junior formula racing at a real British circuit, with a field of rivals who do not follow a fixed path but respond to what is happening around them. That is precisely what separated Revs from its competition, where opponents functioned as moving obstacles.

Crammond built on this foundation with Stunt Car Racer and, more consequentially, the Grand Prix series, which defined what racing simulation meant on PC through the nineties. Revs is the start of a line that ran a very long way.

The record lists a single player and places the game in the Formula 1 series. The graphics are wireframe and austere, which was the price of the calculations the machine had to perform.

OldGame.cz runs it directly in the browser. Be warned that Revs is difficult and will not reveal itself in five minutes, but it remains one of the most historically significant racing games ever written.