Street Rod 1 is the first in the series of California Games. It's quite a bit like Street Rod 2, but in some aspects it's not as good, first of all the choice of cars isn't quite as good as in the sequel, and also the performance of the game seems a little less good.

The plot of the game is quite simple: you buy used cars and race them for money or pink slips. The cars you are able to buy range in price and speed and reliability. The types of cars you can race are Bel-Air's, Vette's, Ford Fairlane's, Dodge Solara's, Oldsmobiles, T-Birds, and the very impressive V8 Roadster. You also will be able to purchase used car parts also out of the newspaper's classifieds; you can buy spare parts such as new tires, manifolds, engines, exhausts, carburetors, mufflers, fuel injectors, and tunnel rams. Other things you can do to your purchased car are chop the roof and bumpers and give it a new paint job; each will cost you a bit of money and probably won't impact the performance of the car too much.

When you start the game, you start off with $750 bucks, which is just enough to buy you a 2-door Chevy or a Fairlane, which is good enough to start off with and be able to win small amounts of money to build the car up into a bit of a speed machine, sell it, and buy something faster and more reliable like the V8 Roadster or a Vette, which is a couple of grand compared to the 800 or so bucks for the Chevy. The types of races you can race are the drag race (for $10, $50 or just for kicks) or the road race (for $20, $100 or for pink slips, which means you get the other guy's car if you win).

When you start the game you get the choice of ega/vga/cga/hercules/tandy graphics for graphics and adlib or normal for sound options, the only thing that could have been better about the game is maybe some good aussie cars, perhaps a Monaro!