Hard Drivin'

Hard Drivin'
"We painstakingly analyze these car crashes for your enjoyment." -UrinatingTree
Genre(s): Racing Platform(s): Arcade Amiga Amstrad CPC Lynx Atari ST Commodore 64 MS-DOS Sega Genesis ZX Spectrum Release Date: February 1989 Developer(s): Atari Games Tengen Domark Publisher(s): Atari Games Namco Series: Hard Drivin' Successor: Race Drivin'

Hard Drivin' is a 3D racing game released in 1989 for the arcades and ported to various consoles and home computers the following years. A sequel was made, called Race Drivin' in 1990. An NES version was in development and was finished, but was never released and only prototypes exist. The Commodore 64 version was only released as part of the Wheels of Fire and TNT compilations.

Why It Should Get PWNEEEEED!!!

NOTE: These mostly apply to the home console versions.

1. The home console ports have inferior graphics with very blocky polygons. The Commodore 64 version is the worst looking version with nearly everything having blue and yellow colors.
2. Horrible controls. The car swerves all over the place and can even go off-road.
3. Very low and choppy framerate, especially in the Genesis and Commodore 64 versions.
4. No music in game except when watching the "Instant Replay".
5. Dull and screechy sound effects.
6. The game's demo unfairly shows the player playing very well. Also the introduction claims that the game's cars are "state of the art sports cars." If racing cars were this slippery to control in real life racers in training would have been injured fatally and not even able to become racers in the first place.
7. Half of the screen is taken up by the H.U.D. and other useless details. The H.U.D. gauges don't even animate to show how much fuel you have.
8. The Commodore 64 version doesn't even have the Instant Replay that nearly all the other ports had.
9. Numerous bugs and glitches. One glitch can cause your car to collide and crash into a wall that isn't even near the car. Another glitch shows your car, in the instant replay video shown when you crash, on top of a barn which you actually drove on the side of.
10. Only one race track to race on.
11. The graphics are look like it was made out of Legos.

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. It's still impressive pulling off 3D polygons without any special chip like the Super FX chip or the SVP chip despite the game running choppy as mentioned above.

Reception

ZZap64! 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%, stating that "Even the AA couldn't save this wreck of a game". The port also has a rating of 1.7 on Lemon64 and is ranked as #22 on Lemon64's "Worst games" list. The port was also ranked at number 72 of Tats top 100 shittiest games. Joe of Game Sack praised the game for pulling off 3D polygons without any special chip in one of Game Sack's Games That Push Hardware Limits video but bashed it for its super low frame rate.

UrinatingTree's review had made the game have a cult following, especially with his quote "PWNED!" at the end of the video that became an internet meme.

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