Speed Racer was one of the first top-down racing games for the
Commodore 64, and probably for home computers in general. Apart
from the usual gameplay (reach the goal as quickly possible, avoid
crashes with other cars) it offered an additional feature: pedestrians
crossing the street that could be hit—or not. A pedestrian hit
will be reduced to a blood patch (making it one of the C64's first
gore games) and give the player a horn
.
A pedestrian not hit will give the player a halo
.
This little extra raised a few eyebrows and made Speed Racer the first ever game to be put on the German index of media harmful to adolescents. It was not the last: a few months later half a dozen more games were indexed, including, amusingly, Paratrooper.
Actually, as I found out later, another game was put on the index along with Speed Racer: River Raid, a vertical shoot-'em-up which lets you attack targets on the ground. But when Activision published an Anthology for the PlayStation 2 in 2002 that included this game, they successfully requested to have it taken off the index. The USK now gave it a rating for all ages.
As far as I could find out, Chris Warling wrote only one more game, Candy Bandit, also in 1983. It seems to have been entirely inoffensive.
