Rally-X

Namco entered 1980 with Rally-X, which at the time was among the most technically ambitious arcade titles on the market. It was one of the first titles with a smoothly scrolling maze shown alongside a clear minimap and continuously playing background music – features that were a complete novelty at a time when most machines offered static screens and only occasional sound effects, clearly setting the game apart from the competition.

The player drove a red car through a maze full of blue opponents, collecting yellow flags scattered across the track, with collecting all the flags on a level opening the way to the next round. The only defense was a limited supply of smoke screen that could be released behind the vehicle to temporarily confuse pursuers – the engine also consumed fuel, so its supply had to be watched too, with timely stops at fuel stations scattered around the maze. The simple rules thus hid surprisingly demanding decisions about which route to take and when to use limited resources, setting the game apart from the purely reflex-based titles of its time.

Rally-X became one of Namco's most commercially successful titles of the early eighties, and its concept of a maze with chase elements influenced numerous later games in the genre, including the company's own sequels, which further built on the chase-in-a-maze motif. Today it is remembered mainly as a technical milestone – a game that showed an arcade machine could offer a far smoother and musically richer experience than had previously been expected from a simple maze title.

Why play it: It is one of the first titles to combine smooth maze scrolling with continuous background music.