When I was a child, I remember this arcade game I used to play called OutRun developed by Sega in 1986.
"The game world is divided into multiple stages that each ends in a checkpoint, and reaching the end of a stage provides more time. Near the end of each stage, the track forks to give the player a choice of routes." (Wikipedia)
So I'm wondering, was OutRun the first racing game with this mechanic, or is there something older?
I found an older one, which is TX-1 released by Namco in 1983.
It introduced nonlinear gameplay by allowing players to choose which path to drive through after each checkpoint, eventually leading to one of eight possible final destinations.
TX-1 was a pioneer in this style of play, which would be copied by myriad other games, especially Sega's successful Out Run series.
This is its flyer:
Well, the idea wasn't unique in that year, and there's this Fast Tracks game that's older than your 1986-09-20 since it was reported in the 1986-06 issue of Aktueller Software Markt. The game's further evidence of existence is this Wikipedia article and
This screenshot from MobyGames which shows a location with multiple ways to reach it, and therefore a fork somewhere before, judging from the caption:
Two different ways to get here
