My wildest arcade dreams came true..

I perchance happened across an auction on ebay with five hours left.
It was a local auction for an Atari arcade game called Race Drivin'.

Now, I have a fetish for driving games, and I particularly appreciate realism. And Race Drivin' is was about as realistic as you can get - it was the first full-3D driving game, it had a force feedback steering wheel, a full clutch/stick shift, driving physics, and a price tag of something like $6/$8/$15k?? (I've heard various reports, anyone know?)

It is, verily,

The greatest game in the world.

Ah yes.
And I saw it on ebay with five hours left and bought it for $200.

And the gods smiled down upon me...

Okay, I'm getting a little heavy with the prose, but I have always dreamed of having this game - and I didn't expect it to happen 'till I was loaded with cash, yet, here it is.

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[EDIT: 2025]

So, many years later the cabinet went into storage as I gave up my SF home and travelled around the world for about a decade. When we bought our house in 2018 I moved it in, but the monitor board fried. I managed to find someone to repair it online, but f'in porch pirates stole the box when it was shipped back to us. It took a couple of years to find a replacement and then get that one repaired, and by that time the cabinet was barely working. A bunch of the controls were getting flakey or not broken.

After years of languishing, in 2025 I got the cabinet up and working, stick shift and even the seat magnet working! (the only feature not functioning is the magnet in the shifter that makes it hard to shift out without pressing the clutch... what a cool simulator). My 6 year old was ecstatic to finally get a chance to try to drive the game.