Most of his television interviews prove too elusive to find, but he makes an appearance in this stock library clip: Hired shortly after Death Race’s release, he immediately found himself in the middle of a media circus. Paul Jacobs was Exidy’s head of marketing. Front panel artwork by Pat Peak, stitched together from several perspective-corrected source photos and cleaned up. He created several other marquees for Exidy (and others) at around the same time, but I was unable to learn anything of Peak’s post-Exidy life. The artist: Pat ‘Sleepy’ Peakĭeath Race’s striking cabinet artwork was created by Pat Peak, who went by the name “Sleepy”. More recently, he served as the Chief Architect of the ISS Partner Program at Valley Christian Schools in San Jose, California, an institution he still works with today. He also designed the Sorcerer, an early home computer, in 1978.īeginning in 1986, he spent eighteen years as an executive at Sega USA, overseeing production of many now-classic arcade games. Though (as he explained above) he merely modified an existing design to create Death Race, he engineered many historic games during his time at Exidy, including Circus, Car Polo, Star Fire, and Chiller.
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Handling the former was ex-USAF instructor Howell Ivy, another Ramtek alumnus. The conversion of Destruction Derby to Death Race involved both new engineering and new art. But before Death Race was released, he departed to run his own electronics business.Īfter that, documented details of his life become scarce, but I heard from two sources that he sadly passed away a few years later. Metzler likely designed the original Destruction Derby hardware, being the only engineer in the company at the time. When he founded Exidy, one of Kauffman first hires was his former co-worker. The Destruction Derby engineer: John MetzlerĮxidy’s first engineer, John Metzler, had been a colleague of Kauffman’s at their previous employer, Ramtek. Described by Steven Kent as “a very quiet man”, Kauffman was the CEO of Exidy for the lifetime of the company, from its formation in 1973 through to the decline of the company’s arcade business and the pivot to redemption games in the 1990s: in total, an impressive 23-year tenure. The boss: Pete KauffmanĪs with most of Exidy’s creations, it seems founder Pete Kauffman gave the green light to both Destruction Derby and Death Race. Pete Kauffman (left), Howell Ivy (middle), and Paul Jacobs (right), on the cover of a 1983 issue of RePlay. I tried to identify as many Death Race contributors as I could here’s everything I was able to find. Who worked on the game (and where are they now)?Ĭredits for early arcade games are often undocumented, their makers denied recognition for their work. Then all they needed was a new name and cabinet design, and Death Race was ready to sell. So we changed the cars to gremlins, crashed cars to crosses, and crash sounds to screams. Any other choice would be a completely new designed system, which would take too long.
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So image memory and analog components changes could be the only thing that could be changed to make the PCB a different game. All the PCBs at that time were dedicated and hard logic without microprocessors or programs that could be changed. I made modifications to the PCB by changing the image memories and audio circuits to create a different game utilizing the same PCB. (The company would collapse two years later.) Contractually prohibited from selling the machine themselves, but receiving little in the way of royalties, Exidy decided to change the game just enough to bring it to market as a new product. Unfortunately, the timing of the deal coincided with Chicago running out of, er, coin. Or at least that’s how it was supposed to go. Image from The Golden Age Arcade Historian. Chicago Coin flyer for Demolition Derby, “the most unique game ever made”.