In the early days of video arcade games, three genres stood out in terms of popularity. Number one has to be shooting games (with examples like
Space Wars,
Space Invaders and Nintendo's own
Sheriff), followed by racing games and sport simulation games (including
Pong!). All three genres have remained popular ever since.
Early arcade racing games include Taito's
Speed Race (1974) and Atari's
Night Driver (1976).
In 1978 Nintendo brought the video game racing experience to living rooms in Japan, with the introduction of
Color TV Game Racing 112 (カラー テレビゲーム レーシング 112).
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| Nintendo Color TV Game Racing 112 (1978) |
It is one of the first home video game with an actual steering wheel. The
Coleco Telstar Arcade, which also featured a steering wheel (as well as a gun), was released one year earlier in the US.
Racing 112 is the third of the four games in the
Nintendo Color TV Game series. It followed
TV Game 6 and
TV Game 15, both from 1977. Like all games in the
Color TV Games series, it is a dedicated game machine with hardwired game play and a fixed number of game variants.
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| Color TV Game Racing 112 and Color TV Game Block Kuzushi |
Racing 112 is a big game, with a big box (check out the size difference with
Block Kuzushi in above picture).
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| What's in the box |
The console features a steering wheel and gear shift for single-player game mode, and two paddle controllers for two-player mode.
The model number of
Racing 112 is "CTG-CR112". The box exterior contains the Nintendo name in the copyright notice, as well as in large kanji ("任天堂").
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| A price drop to ¥12,500 required the existing stock to be sticker-ed over |
The game price was originally set to ¥18,000, but quickly lowered to ¥12,500 to ensure competitiveness. The price would eventually be further reduced to ¥5,000.
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| Later versions of the box have the lower price printed on them |
When opening the box, we see the console firmly packed between two polystyrene pieces.
The steering wheel is included loose, to reduce the dimensions of the game and prevent an even bigger box.
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| Color TV Game Racing 112 manual |
The steering wheel can be mounted easily on the console, and taken off again after playing.
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| The manual includes assembly instructions |
Like all other
Color TV Games, the set includes an RF-switch. In the 70s, TV sets were still produced primarily for watching television broadcasts. They were not yet designed to take input signals from multiple devices, and only had a single input (intended to be connected the an antenna). A video game like
Racing 112 could be connected directly to this input, but this would require the antenna cable to be removed and moved back again before and after playing the video game.
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| RF switch included with Color TV Game Racing 112 |
Enter the RF-switch. This device allowed both the video game and antenna to be connected to the TV at the same time. With the switch you would select which of the two input signals you wanted to pass on to the TV. Once installed you would have no more messing about with cables before and after play.
In 1978 a typical video game manual contained many pages with instructions on hooking up the console to your TV set. Today life has become somewhat simpler, thanks to TV sets with multiple AV inputs. And with the current widespread availability of cable TV, who remembers roof-top antennas?
The console measures an impressive 43 centimeters wide. The steering wheel is 18 centimeters in diameter. The casing has a nice off-white and brown color combination and feels very solid. The widened and raised body underneath the steering wheel gives a real dashboard-like feel to the controls left and right of it.
The "Racing 112" name is included on a bright metal faceplate on the front. Like the two earlier Color TV Games, the Nintendo name is still not displayed prominently; only on the box and on the bottom of the console.
The gear-shift and steering wheel on the front-side of the console are used to control one of the one-screen cars in single-player mode. The gear shift has two positions. First gear is up.
Second gear is down.
On the back-side we find two cups for storing the paddle controllers when they are not used, the output cable (to connect to the TV through the RF-switch) and a connector for the power adapter.
Racing 112 requires an external 9 volt power adapter, which had to be bought separately. It is the same adapter (
model CTGA-901R) used by all games in the
Color TV Game series.
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A note on the inside of the box explains the compatibility of
the required power adapter with TV Game 6 and TV Game 15 |
When switched to two-player mode, the two paddle controllers are used to steer two on-screen cars. These controllers have a good length cable, which is fixed to the console.
The paddles are well-designed and the turning knob has a good size, allowing precise control of the cars.
The objective of the game is to pass as many cars on the track as possible with the player controlled car(s), without crashing into any of them. Every car passed scores a point.
Game variants are selected using the many switches on the control panel on the right.
The top left switch on the control panel is used to select the game mode (ゲームセレクト). The left and middle positions are single-player games, the right position is the two-player mode. The two versions of the single-player mode are "spacious course" (広いコース) and the more difficult "narrow course" (狭いコース).
The top middle switch sets the speed (スペード). From left to right: low (低), medium (中) and high (高) speed. In two-player mode this sets the fixed speed of the game. In single-player mode this defines the top speed of the player's car (reached when switching to second gear with the gear shift). The low speed is not available for single-player mode. The relation between the game mode options and the speed options is indicated by the green and yellow bars above and below these switches.
The red button on the top right is used to start the game (スタート).
The left-most switch in the bottom row is the power switch "電源" ( up is on, down is off).
The other four switches in the bottom row manage special game elements and allow the player to further refine the difficulty level to his or her own taste. From left to right: zigzagging of opponent cars "ジグザグ" (up is yes, down is no), touching the guard rail causes a crash "ガードレール接触" (up is yes, down is no), bad road "悪路" (up is yes, down is no) and number of cars "車の量" (up is many, down is few). The really tough players will set all these switches in the up position.
TV Game 6 had six game variants.
TV Game 15 had fifteen. After looking at all these switches and related settings, one question remains: does
Racing 112 really have one-hundred and twelve game variants, as the name suggests?
It turns out this is actually true, though many of the variants are simply permutations of the same game elements.
Let's do the math. There are
seven game modes it total; four single-player modes (spacious or narrow course combined with medium or fast speed) plus three two-player modes (low, medium or fast speed). With the four difficulty switches it is possible to select
sixteen different options (2x2x2x2).
So, seven game modes with sixteen difficulty options each brings the total to
one-hundred and twelve game variants (16 x 7 = 112).
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| The manual includes an overview of the 112 game variants |
Color TV Game Racing 112 is a fun and challenging racing game. As one of the earliest Nintendo home video games it was rightly honored with a mini game in
Wario Ware Inc for
Game Boy Advance.
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| Racing 112 mini game in Wario Ware |
Also check out this
Racing 112 leaflet.
