Fast Tracks: The Computer Slot Car Construction Kit

We already know this is when Electronic Arts released Racing Destruction Set, a game where you could design racetracks, adjust physics, throw in a few weapons, and enjoy isometric action.

About six months later, Activision answered with Mark Tomel's Fast Tracks, the computer's slot car construction kit.

It had an editor where you could connect sections of track together, an erasing mode which was mostly about speed, But you could steer, somehow, mostly to bump enemy cars off the track to reduce your race time so that you qualified for a high score.

The most marketable feature, however, advertised right on the front cover, was that you could take your homemade track with your high scores on it and master it to a special disc to challenge your friends.

This created an independently playable version of Fast Tracks that had no editor and only your track to race on.

While we're on editing tracks, I'll mention that in 85, Taito released Super Dead Heat in arcades.

Developed by Fukuyo Mitsuji between Halley's Comet and Bubble Bobble, it was a huge four-player machine with pairs of steering wheels on two sides and four CRT displays pointing vertically up in the middle.