Tesla Arcade is here, letting you play driving sims with your car's steering wheel

Tesla Model S
Image credit: Tesla (Image credit: Tesla)

After much teasing, Tesla has begin rolling out an update that will effectively turn its cars into a proper gaming platform.

Tesla Arcade will make games powered by the Unreal and Unity engines playable on dashboards to keep you occupied when you're sitting around waiting for your car to charge (one of the main drawbacks of electric cars, despite Tesla's speedy Supercharger network).

The latest update is an evolution of the 'Teslatari' emulator, which brought Atari classics such as Asteroids and Pole Position to the company's cars last year, keeping drivers from twiddling their thumbs,

Arcade machines

CEO Elon Musk teased Tesla Arcade at this year's E3 game show, revealing that Bethesda's Fallout Shelter would soon be available to play on dashboards, and for the official launch the company released a trailer demonstrating its first ported game, Beach Buggy 2.

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It may just be for comic effect, but the trailer shows the racing sim being played using the car's own controls, (as we predicted when Tesla announced that super-tough platformer Cuphead was on its way to the Tesla Model S, Model 3 and Model X).

Perhaps alarmingly, the parked car's steering seems to be still connected, which can't be doing the front tires any favors, eventually necessitating a trip to a Tesla Service Center. Looks like fun, though.

Via Electrek

Cat Ellis

Cat is the editor of TechRadar's sister site Advnture. She’s a UK Athletics qualified run leader, and in her spare time enjoys nothing more than lacing up her shoes and hitting the roads and trails (the muddier, the better)