Unsung Heroes: Super Sprint

I know, I know. I’m supposed to say iPod’s click wheel, or the Western Electric 500 rotary dial, or maybe the first Nest. But, have you ever played Super Sprint? It was Super Sprint that had the first amazing rotary controller I’ve ever used, and the whole cabinet design told you the game was very well aware of that. Super Sprint was a 1986 arcade game from Atari that was, in a nutshell: four cars (at least one computer-controlled), eight tracks, fast races. You might think that those wheels functioned similarly to a regular car steering wheel, but not really – they were much easier to spin, and needed to travel further to rotate the car. You wouldn’t steer delicately, but rather the opposite: you needed to throw the wheel violently in one direction, and then, at the perfect moment, stop it on a dime: So the huge wheels were not realistic. Neither were the cars. They accelerated rapidly – the gas pedal was your only other control – and had a ridiculous amount of understeer. Don’t let…