In this day in gaming history, albeit 1976, Kee Games unleashed Sprint 2 to arcades in North America. While this would seem as though it would be a sequel, Sprint was actually released in 1978. The “2” in Sprint 2 notates the number of players.
Developed and Published by Kee Games (Kee Games is notable for many reasons, but that’s another story for another day), Sprint 2 was one the first arcade games developed with a Microprocessor, the 6502 Microchip. This allowed for features never used before. Sprint 2 is important because it allowed for “autodriving” without the cars being on rails. This artificial intelligence told the competitor cars which parts of the track to drive on based on the style of the players. in addition, Sprint 2 was the first arcade game to use the familiar Atari font, which is the font Atari games included in almost every title following the release of Sprint 2.
While Sprint 2 was one of the top 5 earning games between 1977 and 1979, it isn’t talked about today as much as games like Missile Command, Centipede, Space Invaders, or other top-selling arcade games. In the grand scheme of thing, because of it’s new technology and intelligence at the time, Sprint 2 stands alongside the aforementioned titles as one of the most important arcade titles ever released.
Sources: Fontstruct, Killer List of Video Games, Sprint 2 Wikipedia
