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The Driving Games Manual: The Ultimate Guide to All Car-based Computer and Video Games
The first definitive guide to driving games, outlining the history of the driving video game, covering all platforms past and present -- Arcade, Home Computer (PC, Sinclair Commodore, etc), and Console (Sony PlayStation, Nintendo, X-Box & Sega ). Starting from 1974 with the first arcade driving game 'Game Trak 10' to the present day. The book provides and overview of the genre, an illustrated summary of driving games. For those games that are not featured, there will be a list, broken down by format summarizing game title, developer and publisher, and profiles of creators of the key games of the era.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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January 31, 2019
The Driving Games Manual: The ultimate guide to all car-based computer and video games by João Diniz Sanches (with a foreward by Bruno Senna) is not that. It was never going to be, because including every racing game would’ve been impossible. This is something which Sanchez himself explains, instead focusing on specific titles that he thinks developed the genre in a significant way. This is a book I had no idea existed but am glad to have discovered. Gamers, despite being dismissed by everyone else, are quick to dismiss the racing genre. If this is the only book so far published about it, then Sanchez would be to it as Carol Clover is to the horror film: the first to take it seriously and write about it long form in a mainstream medium. For that alone, I respect and credit this book. It’s the first word on what should be a much longer conversation.
For the first of its kind, there are no comparisons. None of its material has been covered before, so Sanchez essentially had unlimited choice of what games to include. Despite his opening statement regarding the logistics of such, there’s still the feeling of there being a wide ratio of games included to how much is actually said about them overall. Sanchez explains that the racing genre can be categorised into arcade and simulator. Much of the first half or so charts this development, with the genre being basically both to begin with in primitive form before gradually separating. It’s after that separation that very little changes. As technology improves and allows for more realistic games to be made, the simulators merge together and become the same, while arcade racers don’t require any particular innovation because that’s not what its players are looking for. That’s not a criticism of Sanchez, it’s an explanation of what’s become of the subject he’s chronicling, although he doesn’t address it directly. As he comes closer to the present, it becomes apparent in the way he writes about them with lots of repeated descriptions and the way that sections become shorter and more similar-sounding. If the homogenisation of the two racing game sub-genres isn’t clearly implied, it can still be still be highly inferred.
The question, then, is: is it clearly implied? I don’t know. This is the first book on the subject that I know if, so I don’t think there needs to be the expectation of any insight beyond simple descriptions, even if it does, at times, resemble a glorified online listicle. But as someone who writes weekly about racing games, the reason I generally stick to pre-seventh generation is because after that is when there’s less to say about each one that couldn’t be said about numerous contemporaries. Reading Sanchez’s account, he seemed to have noticed this, even if he wasn’t necessarily aware of that.
For the first of its kind, there are no comparisons. None of its material has been covered before, so Sanchez essentially had unlimited choice of what games to include. Despite his opening statement regarding the logistics of such, there’s still the feeling of there being a wide ratio of games included to how much is actually said about them overall. Sanchez explains that the racing genre can be categorised into arcade and simulator. Much of the first half or so charts this development, with the genre being basically both to begin with in primitive form before gradually separating. It’s after that separation that very little changes. As technology improves and allows for more realistic games to be made, the simulators merge together and become the same, while arcade racers don’t require any particular innovation because that’s not what its players are looking for. That’s not a criticism of Sanchez, it’s an explanation of what’s become of the subject he’s chronicling, although he doesn’t address it directly. As he comes closer to the present, it becomes apparent in the way he writes about them with lots of repeated descriptions and the way that sections become shorter and more similar-sounding. If the homogenisation of the two racing game sub-genres isn’t clearly implied, it can still be still be highly inferred.
The question, then, is: is it clearly implied? I don’t know. This is the first book on the subject that I know if, so I don’t think there needs to be the expectation of any insight beyond simple descriptions, even if it does, at times, resemble a glorified online listicle. But as someone who writes weekly about racing games, the reason I generally stick to pre-seventh generation is because after that is when there’s less to say about each one that couldn’t be said about numerous contemporaries. Reading Sanchez’s account, he seemed to have noticed this, even if he wasn’t necessarily aware of that.
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