Winning Run

Winning Run is Namco's first 32-bit arcade game, released at the end of 1988, and running upon the company's then-new System 21 hardware (which is identical to their System 2 hardware but modified to support a 32768-colour palette); it is a first-person game in which the player takes control of one of two different cars (a blue one named "EASY" and a red one named "TECHNICAL"), in either a "PRACTICE" or a "GRAND PRIX" race. As with both games and Final Lap, the controls are comprised of: a steering wheel (to steer your car left and right), a gear shifter (to change the gear your car is driving in but the two cars in this game have six different ones), a gas pedal (to accelerate your car), and a break pedal (to decelerate your car) - the filled three-dimensional polygonal graphics are also reminiscent of the ones introduced in Atari's I, Robot (which was released five years earlier).

This is the first title in the Winning Run series. It was followed by three sequels: Winning Run Suzuka Grand Prix (1989), Winning Run 3 (1990) and Winning Run '91 (1991). Driver's Eyes (which was also released in 1990) also features similar gameplay to this series (but it utilizes a total of three monitors). "Suzuka Grand Prix" also allows four players to play simultaneously, when four single-player cabinets were linked together (much like Namco's own Dirt Fox), and was the third game from that company to feature the Suzuka Circuit after Pole Position II back in 1983 and the inceptive "Final Lap" from 1987.