Super Sprint review: three players, one tiny track

Three players stand side by side at one wide cabinet. On it, a tiny race track, all of it visible at once, with little cars that look like toys. A green light, a scream of engines, and three kids immediately slide into the same wall. Super Sprint is chaos with a lap counter.

The whole track, all the time

The circuits are viewed from above and always fit on the screen, so the game never scrolls. That one decision changes everything. Nobody is ahead of the camera and nobody falls off it. Every player sees every car, every shortcut, every crash. You can watch your friend take the wrong line and laugh while you do the same thing half a second later.

The cars feel light and loose. Next Generation later called the understeer massive and unrealistic, then admitted it adds a sense of urgency, and that is the best description of the game anyone has written. You are never quite in control. You are negotiating.

Super Sprint is less about driving well than about sliding less than the person next to you.

Wrenches, oil and tornadoes

Upgrades keep you coming back. You collect wrenches that lie on the track, and trading three of them gets you better traction, acceleration or top speed. You feel the choice the next race, and you argue about it with whoever is next to you. Later tracks add oil puddles and miniature tornadoes that spin you out, and if you wreck, a helicopter drops in and puts a new car on the track. It is cartoonish in the best way.

Old Atari DNA

Super Sprint is a successor to Gran Trak 10 and the Sprint series that Atari, Inc. made during the 1970s, and you can feel that lineage in the overhead view and the simple, physical controls. Atari Games brought the idea back with more color, more players and much more noise.

What it meant back then

The wide three-player cabinet was a social machine, and in American arcades it drew a crowd like few others. At a roller rink, a bowling alley or the arcade at the mall, three seats meant three friends, or two friends and a stranger who would become a friend by the second race. You fed it quarters to keep your seat and yelled at whoever cut you off on the last turn.

Playing it today

The handling is still slippery and the tracks are still short, which makes it perfect for quick rounds. Alone it is fine. With two other people it is one of the purest party games the arcade ever made. Put three chairs in a row and see who is still smiling after five races.