Exidy’s 1976 arcade game, in which players ran over shrieking "gremlins" that turned into tombstones, triggered the first organised public outcry over video game violence — a full 17 years before Mortal Kombat.
What makes Death Race historically significant is not its crude monochrome graphics but its role as a first draft. Nearly every element of later moral panics is already present in 1976: lurid press coverage, an expert warning of psychological harm, safety and advocacy groups demanding action, and — crucially — a surge in sales driven by the very notoriety meant to suppress the game. Exidy could not have bought better advertising than the condemnation it received.
The "gremlins" defence — that the targets were monsters, not people — also previews a recurring tactic in games censorship, one that would resurface two decades later when Carmageddon swapped its human victims for zombies. Death Race proved that controversy sells, a lesson the industry would exploit deliberately by the time Grand Theft Auto arrived.
The controversy backfired commercially — the publicity drove up demand and prompted another production run — but protests kept total output to roughly 500 units. More importantly, it set the enduring cultural pattern: a new medium accused of corrupting the young, media amplification, and sales boosted rather than dampened by the outrage. It is remembered as the birth of the video-game "violence debate" that would recur with Mortal Kombat, Doom, and Grand Theft Auto.