Death Race Arcade is a futuristic vehicular combat game that plays up to 8 with low downtime. It features simultaneous action selection, outlandish sci-fi weaponry, a scrolling race track with powerups, and respawns instead of player elimination.
Each player is a driver in the Death Race. The primary goal for all players is to cross the finish line (or to be as close as possible to it by the time someone else does). There are a number supplementary scoring metrics involving simple accumulation and set collection. So finishing first, while important, does not guarantee the win.
In each round of the game, all players simultaneously play 2 of their control cards face down. These cards "program" the movements of their vehicles. Cards are then simultaneously revealed, after which each player takes a turn to resolve their vehicle movement, activate powerups, and fire weapons.
Death Race has 2 modes of play: a symmetrical mode in which all vehicles have 9 identical control cards, and an asymmetric mode in which each vehicle has 4 or 5 (of 9) cards that give it unique abilities.