A strange little side quest
Wheely 8: Aliens may feel immediate, but the ideas around racing have been evolving for a very long time. Atari's Gran Trak 10 from 1974 is recognized as the first arcade racing video game, decades before modern 3D racers. The broader history adds one more wrinkle. Arthur Wynne published a diamond-shaped 'Word-Cross' in the New York World on December 21, 1913; the name later shifted to 'Cross-Word' and then 'crossword'. That long chain of experiments is part of why racing still feels fresh when a game finds the right twist.