Overrated! #9

Hard Drivin' (1988)
By: Atari Genre: Drivin' Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 44,091
Also Available For: Mega Drive, Lynx, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum

When I recently had the brainwave to include this notable game in my 'Overrated!' feature it seemed like a superb idea and I congratulated myself accordingly, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's a game that was ever all that highly rated to begin with. I mean, I seem to recall the conversions getting decent reviews in the many magazines of the day but it's not really a game that gets mentioned nowadays, nor as far back as I can remember after its release. I first played it on my trusty Speccy and it was pretty good, all things considered, but fairly soon after I did actually find its arcade progenitor too. I seem to recall it being a pretty pricey game for the day but I had to try it, obviously. It was housed in a large sit-down cab and was one of those machines that made it seem like a big deal. It even had a key to start it! Once I started playing it, however, I was rather less impressed.

Soon after the start, choose your track...

Well, okay, not immediately. It was still dazzling to young eyes in the late 80s - we'd never seen anything like it before, unless you happened to stumble upon Namco's Winning Run which launched the previous month. Indeed, both games were based on the same hardware as a result of Namco owning Atari when it was developed, and the games were the first two polygon-based driving games ever. Namco did the same as Sega would do a few years later and based their revolutionary 3D game on the world of F1 racing, but Atari's game was a bit different. Instead of a high-performance racer, it gives you a 'normal' car and a choice of two tracks to drive it around - the speed track and the stunt track - although they are actually just one-and-a-half tracks really as there are parts that feature in each, as you can see from the title screen. Soon after setting off from the start/finish line you'll reach a fork in the road - simply turn right for the stunt track or continue on straight for the speed track. I wonder which one most will go for on their first play?

Yes, it's the famous loop! It's really real!

It doesn't take a genius to see the appeal of vehicular stunts, after all, and word of the game's wonders, especially of an apparent 'loop' in the road, had reached many ears, and it was this that lured many of us in. In many cases, it was likely because we simply didn't believe it was real. BUT!! Yes, it was, even on the Speccy! The stunt track is obviously the shorter of the two but still finds space to include a scary drawbridge jump, a banked corner, and that famous loopy-loop, as well as a few smaller jumps and sharp turns and stuff. The speed track is a figure-of-eight and features a couple of the smaller jumps but it's mostly a pair of long straights and long sweeping curves that join them. Whichever track you go for, however, the object is the same - keep going for as long as you can before the time runs out. More time is awarded at the checkpoint (one on each track) and when crossing the star/finish line, but it's still easy to run out.

Nearing the summit of the drawbridge...

There are other vehicles pootling about on both sides of the road (for yes, it is a normal two-way road), and there are several other racers too, but there are no positions at stake - it's just you against the clock, and it's surprisingly easy to lose time. This is mainly done by veering off track or crashing. The former is less severe, of course, but it can take a while to get back on the road as your car is very sluggish on the grass. Crashing is still much more frustrating though. This will mostly be caused by hitting another vehicle or taking a jump too fast which will see you sailing through the air, then exploding when you land, but it can seem a lot more random too. When playing it just yesterday, for example, my car blew up just from gently scraping a wall! Whatever might cause your crash (which is indicated by a cracked windscreen), they obviously cost you time as you wait for your car to be repositioned and build up speed again.

There's a cow next to that barn. The first polygon cow?

I suppose this kind of thing is to be expected since Atari marketed the game as "the world's first authentic driving simulation game" - you're not going to be careening around the track(s) bouncing off everything in sight. Even with that in mind, though, the handling here is still an issue, mainly due to how easy it is to spin when cornering, and it's also far from easy to maintain control when landing from a jump. I suppose they had to make it a bit challenging somehow, and landing from a big jump would probably be tricky in the best of situations in real life, but it quickly proves irritating here. If you do manage to master or at least tolerate the handling sufficiently, you'll get to race against the special 'Phantom Photon' car aaaand... that's about it. I'm not complaining there though - not only was it an arcade game but, in the eyes of many, it was little more than a tech demo, so for any semblance of game to be included can only be a bonus, right?

Nearing the banked corner - don't fall off!

In that regard, it's a bit better than I remember. The polgon count is understandably low but it still looks half decent even now. Back then it knocked our socks off! No matter how many gimmicks Atari might've come up with, though, the novelty does wear off, and you're left with a rather slow and, frankly, even boring example (yes, even the loop once you've driven round it a few times). Driving/racing games are supposed to be exciting, aren't they? I suppose the title does says 'drivin' as opposed to 'racin' though, and they can be distinctly different games. This one was a technical marvel and it did its job - it's flashiness pulled in gamers and they filled it with coin after coin after coin, just to see that loop in many cases, but once you'd gotten used to the ultra-realistic (for its time) visuals and physics, there just wasn't enough to bring you back time and time again, even in the acades, and especially with the home versions. A genuine landmark title, technically, but is it that great as a game? I'm not sure it ever was really.

RKS Score: 5/10

Gameplay Video: here's a video of the whole game being played by one of the talented fellows at Insert Coin (check out their great channel here). Oh, and don't watch if you want to avoid spoilers!