Gran Trak 10

Developer	Cyan Engineering / Atari Inc
Publisher	Atari Inc
Date	March 1974
Links	MobyGames

Gran Trak 10 was released in March 1974 by Atari Inc, co-developed with the firm Cyan Engineering. Based off of existing electro-mechanical arcade driving games and inspired by a Scientific American mathematical game by Martin Gardner called Racetrack, Gran Trak 10 was the first graphical car racing video game ever released.

The initial prototype of the game was created at Cyan Engineering by Steve Mayer and Larry Emmons - founders of Cyan - with additional help by Bob Walker and Ron Milner. Among other notable features, it is one of the first arcade games to make use of a ROM chip as well as custom analog-digital hybrid chips in order to prevent copying by competitors. This extra hardware lead to production issues with the game, which first shipped in March of 1974 but had to be re-released in May of 1974 along with a redesigned model called Trak 10 which was identical in gameplay but did not make use of the custom chips internally.

Kee Games, the company secretly owned by Atari, also released their own version of the game known as Formula K.

Development

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  Prototype model for Gran Trak 10 being tested. (1973)

Production

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  Inside the production line for Gran Trak 10. (1974)

Flyers

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  Front page of the first Gran Trak 10 flyer. (1974)

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  Back page of the first Gran Trak 10 flyer. (1974)

Articles

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  A report on the static coin reset problem of Gran Trak 10. (1975)

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  Proposed fixes for Atari's Gran Trak series and other games. (1975)

Histories

• https://edfries.wordpress.com/2017/06/14/fixing-gran-trak-10/ — Fixing Gran Trak 10 by Ed Fries.

Books

• They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971-1982 by Alexander Smith.
• Atari Inc. Business is Fun by Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel.