Gran Trak 10

Released in March 1974, selling at an MSRP of $1095.

Gran Track 10 was one of the first driving video game and IS the first game to use ROM memory.

The Trak series took an inventive approach to combating pirates. When Atari assigned a part number to the custom-designed ROMs for the game, they gave it the same number as a Texas Instruments Arithmetic Logic Unit so that when pirates tried to build their own version, they'd order the wrong part and their clones wouldn't work.

Atari's new Grass Valley think Tank was used to design the game, but Atari proper was disappointed by engineering flaws in the original design. Al Alcorn had to step in and fix the game before it went into production. This fix created costly rework and delays for the game. Worse, an accounting error had Gran Trak 10 selling for $995, when it cost $1095 to manufacture. Because of these problems, Atari lost $500,000 on Gran Trak 10, which was as much as the company had made the previous year. The European version of the game was called: "Race Circuit Automaten". The game was advertised as "Durastress" and marketed with Atari's Innovative leisure slogan.

Later in 1974, Gran Trak 10 was repackaged into a smaller cabinet and renamed "Trak 10".

The 2-Player version of this game is called "Gran Trak 20".

The game spawned a variety of spin-offs, both within Atari and by their competitors:
Atari: "Le Mans", "Sprint 4", "Sprint 8", "Championship Sprint", "Super Sprint", "Bad Lands"
Kee Games: "Formula K", "Twin Racer", "Indy 800", "Sprint 2", "Sprint One"
Taito: "Fisco 400"

Steve Wozniak (one of the founder of Apple) was a Gran Trak addict according to Steve Jobs in a 1985 PlayBoy interview.