Hard Drivin'

Arcade version screenshot

Players drive a sports car in a first-person perspective, navigating one to two laps around a stunt track to acquire their best time. This is done while avoiding obstacles and stage hazards such as other vehicles. If the player scores in the top 10 during certain modes, the player races against a computer-controlled car known as Phantom Photon.

There is also a manual transmission mode which includes a clutch pedal and the possibility of stalling the car, along with a force feedback steering wheel, in which the driver would have to operate the car as they would in real life.

While driving, the player's progress is tracked by invisible waypoints, denoted by flags on the course map showing the player's progress when the game ends due to time running out. Passing the waypoint half-way through the track grants the player extra time.

After crashing (either into another vehicle or missing an airborne landing), a ten second "Instant Replay" animation plays showing a wide aerial view of the player's movement and surrounding vehicles leading up to the crash. Following the replay, the player's car is placed back on the track at the last waypoint passed, which may be a significant distance from the point of collision. If the player's car goes off-road, they have ten seconds to return to the track, or else they will be stopped and returned, at a standstill, to the previous waypoint.

The 3D computer graphics arcade hardware that was eventually used for Hard Drivin' began development in the mid-1980s, several years before the game was released. At the time, Atari Games was owned by Namco, and the two companies began working on a 3D arcade system. After Atari and Namco separated, each company developed their own arcade system in the late 1980s, based on the same prototype. Atari used an earlier version of the hardware for Hard Drivin', and Namco developed a more advanced version of the hardware called the Namco System 21, used for Winning Run (1988).[8]

The development of Hard Drivin' began in 1988. Atari also originally intended to release the game in 1988. However, according to one of Atari's engineers and designers, it was delayed due to the dispute from its Vice President claiming that no one would buy an arcade cabinet for $10,000 after The Last Starfighter arcade game was cancelled for that same reason a few years earlier. After weeks of research, it was decided that $10,000 was an acceptable price point.[9][10][11]

In addition to the main CPU, Hard Drivin' uses two TMS34010 32-bit graphics-oriented processors and a digital signal processor.[7]

The contemporary home systems Hard Drivin' was ported to had tremendously less computing power than the arcade machine. These include the Amstrad CPC, Mega Drive / Genesis, and Atari Lynx. The Commodore 64 version was only released as part of the Wheels of Fire compilation. A version for the NES was programmed by Mark Morris, but was unreleased.

Atari sold 3,318 Hard Drivin' arcade cabinets.[2] In Japan, Game Machine listed Hard Drivin' in its June 1, 1989 issue as the second most successful upright/cockpit arcade cabinet of the month.[3] It became Japan's sixth highest-grossing dedicated arcade game of 1990.[22] On Hong Kong's Bondeal charts, it topped the dedicated arcade cabinet chart in November 1989.[4] The Spectrum version rose to number 2 in the UK sales charts, behind Gazza's Superstar Soccer.[23]

Nick Kelly of Commodore User reviewed the arcade version and said: "Hard Drivin' is exactly what its name suggests — difficult. You won't master this quickly, and if you aren't used to driving a car it's going to be very tough for you indeed. But Atari can be proud of themselves for producing a coin-op which really does put you in the driving seat, and that is undeniably a major first."[5]

Zzap!64 magazine regarded the Commodore 64 port as one of the worst C64 games of all time—criticizing the monochrome graphics, painful slowdown, and the lack of instant replays that were present in the other 8-bit conversions. The magazine gave the game 20%.[24] In Japan, the Mega Drive version received a score of 30 out of 40 from a panel of four reviewers.[25]

In 2004, Hard Drivin' was released for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox as part of the Midway Arcade Treasures 2 collection.

The PC games Stunt Driver and Stunts are similar and borrow many elements from Hard Drivin'.

• Hard Drivin' at the Killer List of Videogames
• Hard Drivin at Arcade History
• Hard Drivin' at Atari Mania
• Hard Drivin' at SpectrumComputing.co.uk
• Hard Drivin' at MobyGames