Freeway is an action video game written by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1981.

Depending on the difficulty mode, a chicken is forced back a lane or sent to the bottom of the screen when hit by a vehicle.

Crane stated the game was inspired by an incident involving Activision staff witnessing someone crossing Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.

In their first year, the company released four games, including two developed by Crane: Dragster (1980) and Fishing Derby (1980).

[6] One variation published in 1981 involved Crane and his friends attempting to cross Chicago's busiest thoroughfare after exiting the wrong end of a building.

[6] Game designer Larry Kaplan would later be riding a bus and witnessed someone attempting to cross Lake Shore Drive.

[6] In an interview with Retro Gamer published in 2011, Crane had a variation of the story that the game came from an experience at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago.

[4] Crane's game initially had two men competing to move from the bottom of the screen to the top as many times as possible in two minutes.

"[7] Another article in the publication attributed this as Activision's house style: unorthodox themes with cartoon-styled animation, specifically highlighting Fishing Derby and Freeway as examples.

[10] Critics Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz commented that Freeway was refreshing when so many new titles were just refinements of existing hits.