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harddriv: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Hard Drivin' (c) 1988 Atari Games.

Slide into the contoured seat and adjust it to fit the length of your arms and legs. Put your feet on gas and clutch pedals and try the stick shift. Select manual or automatic transmission, turn the ignition key and you're off!

It’s the ride of your life. You feel the tires grip the road when you take a wide turn at high speed. You're alerted to the smallest change in the road by the feedback steering. You catch air as you fly the draw bridge and land on the down ramp. You control the car as it holds the road on the dizzying vertical loop.

Hard Drivin' might look like an arcade game but it drives like a real car. For the best lap times, drive Hard Drivin' as if it were a real car. The main difference between Hard Drivin' and a real car is that Hard Drivin' is much safer to drive. A player can test the limits of the car and his skill with no risk of personal injury, and follow a course that does not exist anywhere in the real world.

After inserting the proper number of coins to start the simulator, the player can select either an automatic or manual transmission. Turning the ignition key starts the simulator.

Drivers can choose between the stunt track or the speed track by following the posted signs on the road. Each player has a certain (operator-selectable) amount of time to reach a checkpoint or the finish line. Crossing checkpoints and the finish line rewards the player with (operator-selectable) bonus driving time.

With Hard Drivin' a player can test drive a high-powered sports car on a real stunt course. He can jump a draw bridge, negotiate a high-speed banked turn and drive a 360-degree vertical loop. These thrilling stunts, among others, provide the ultimate realistic driving experience.

Or maybe high-speed driving is a particular player's type of excitement. He can 'put the pedal to the metal' and try to keep control around the corners, weaving in and out of traffic while avoiding oncoming cars. All this, and more, await the player behind the wheel of Hard Drivin'.

Players especially enjoy the unique instant replay feature on Hard Drivin'. Every time a player crashes, the simulator records and replays the crash sequence. Not only will the player find this entertaining, but it is also informative. The instant replay shows the player exactly what he did wrong and why he crashed (If a player wants to skip the instant replay, he can press the abort switch or turn the key when the replay starts).

A skilled player finds the ultimate competition in the 'challenge' lap (or 'grudge match' as Atari Games likes to call it). The simulator remembers the path of the car driven by the best driver on record. When a player beats the qualifying lap time, he challenges the car of the past winner in a head-to-head race.

- TECHNICAL -

[Cockpit model]

Game ID : 136052

Main CPU : 68010 (@ 8 Mhz), TMS34010 (@ 6 Mhz), TMS34010 (@ 6.25 Mhz), ADSP2100 (@ 8 Mhz)

Sound CPU : 68000 (@ 8 Mhz), TMS32010 (@ 5 Mhz)

Sound Chips : DAC

Hard Drivin' is equipped with center-feel steering with continuous force feedback, adjustable swivel seat, gas, brake and clutch pedals, four-speed stick shift, and a medium-resolution monitor.

- TRIVIA -

Even if titlescreen says 1988, Hard Drivin' was released in April 1989.

This was the world first driving simulator to use 3-D polygon graphics.

Despite claiming to be a real driving simulator, there were a lot of discrepancies between the game's software physics and the car physics on screen. However, the cockpit physics were considered very accurate at the time.

You may have noticed that the Credit Screen lists Doug Milliken as a Test Driver (See Staff section). He is listed as a Test Driver because Atari didn't want anyone to know what he really did. Hard Drivin' had to be as accurate as possible. That meant doing an accurate car model to mathematically describe the physics of how the parts of the car (engine, transmission, springs, shock absorbers, tires, etc.) react to each other, to the road and to the driver's inputs. The pioneer in the field (in the 1950s) was William Milliken of Milliken Research. His son, Doug, has continued his father's work. Doug is probably the world's leading expert in car modelling. Doug and his father wrote the book on car modelling.

Patents that come out of Hard Drivin' are :

5,005,148 : 'Driving simulator with moving painted dashboard'.

5,354,202 : 'System and method for driver training'.

5,577,913 : 'System and method for driver training with multiple driver competition'.

Prior to the release of Hard Drivin', Namco had acquired a controlling interest in Atari games by 1986. The sharing of R&D information would spawn many games of the same polygon engine years later. It can be credited that the success of the Hard Drivin' engine set the trend for the high quality simulation games in the early 90's.

One of the buildings along the speed course, a small camouflage-painted building, if approached from behind (a non-trivial task, given the off-road time limit) has a sign above its normally-unseen door that says 'THE HUT'.

If the driver slowed down and stopped in front of one of the buildings, a 'keyhole' appeared on the building's door.

There is no apparent Ferrari license shown in any version of the game.

Jeff Garabedian holds the official record for this game with 531,400 points at Aladdin's Castle at the Pontiac Mall in Waterford, MI in the summer of 1989.

There were 15 officially released versions, counting 11 cockpit and 4 compact versions, including various British, German and Japanese versions.

- UPDATES -

Notes : In all British versions, you are in a right-hand drive car.

COCKPIT Revision 1 :

* World release.

* Software version : 7.8.

COCKPIT Revision 2 :

* World release.

* Software version : 7.9.

COCKPIT Revision 3 :

* World release.

* Software version : 8.1.

COCKPIT Revision 4 :

* German release only.

* Software version : 8.2.

COCKPIT Revision 5 :

* British release only.

* Software version : 8.3.

COCKPIT Revision 6

* British and Japanese releases only.

* Software version : 8.4 for Japanese and 8.5 for British.

COCKPIT Revision 7

* World, British and Japanese release.

* Software version : 8.6 for all.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

If the driver made a hard left turn at the start of the game, a 'secret' track was available. The track was a long straight road leading to a very short circular track (a skid pad test track) around a tower.

- SERIES -

1. Hard Drivin' (1988)

2. Race Drivin' (1990)

3. Hard Drivin' II - Drive Harder (1991, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga)

4. Hard Drivin's Airborne (1993)

5. Street Drivin' (1993)

- STAFF -

* Main :

Project leader, game designer, sound system, mech designer, force shifter, analog HW : Rick Moncrief

Technician, mech, designer, sound recording, dashboard shift, game designer : Erik Durfey

Software designer, game designer, car model, force feedback steering, SW tools : Max Behensky

Hardware designer, self test, instant replay, integer 3D algorithms, game designer : Jed Margolin

Game programming, display software, championship lap, game designer : Stephanie Mott

* Others :

Cabinet designers : Mike Jang, Ken Hata

Graphics : Sam Comstock, Kris Moser, Deborah Short, Alan Murphy

Display math software : Jim Morris

ADDN'L programming : Gary Stark, Mike Albaugh, Ed Rotberg

ADDN'L hardware : Don Paauw

Marketing : Linda Benzler, Mary Fujihara

Sales : Shane Breaks

Mechanical designers : Jacques Acknin, Milt Loper, Geoff Barker

Test drivers : Doug Milliken, Dave Shepperd

Music : Don Diekneite

Management : Dan Van Elderen, Lyle Rains, Hide Nakajima

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

NES [Unreleased Prototype]

Sega Mega Drive (1990)

Atari Lynx (1991)

Microsoft XBOX (2004, "Midway Arcade Treasures 2")

Nintendo GameCube (2004, "Midway Arcade Treasures 2")

Sony PlayStation 2 (2004, "Midway Arcade Treasures 2")

* Computers :

Commodore C64 (1989)

Commodore Amiga (1989)

Atari ST (1989)

Amstrad CPC (1989)

Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1990)

PC [MS-DOS] (1990)

PC [MS Windows, CD-ROM] (2006, "Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition")

Notes : Upon purchasing the Amiga version, a questionnaire contest was held where the first 5 people to answer correctly via a postcard sent to London would receive a free model Ferrari F-40 model car by January 8, 1990. The model car is 1/18th the size of the actual car.

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.76u1 [Aaron Giles]

0.37b9 [Aaron Giles, Ernesto Corvi]

0.37b8 [Aaron Giles]

NOTE:

- Hard Drivin' was the first polygon based driving game, and it's graphics were rendered in software mode. The player was immersed in a 3D world with a very realistic physics model. To achieve a high framerate level, even with the powerfull hardware used, graphics had to be sacrificed, the roadside was just a flat surface and the cars were simple polygons with no textures (one could not have the best of both worlds at this time).

WIP:

- 0.139u3: Aaron Giles moved the old hard-coded EEPROM data out into a file in Hard Drivin'.

- 0.133u1: Renamed (harddrvb) to (harddrivb), (harddrvg) to (harddrivg), (harddrvj) to (harddrivj), (harddrb6) to (harddrivb6), (harddrj6) to (harddrivj6), (harddrb5) to (harddrivb5), (harddrg4) to (harddrivg4), (harddrv3) to (harddriv3), (harddrv2) to (harddriv2), (harddrv1) to (harddriv1), (harddrvc) to (harddrivc), (harddrcg) to (harddrivcg), (harddrcb) to (harddrivcb) and (harddrc1) to (harddrivc1).

- 0.130u4: Fabio Priuli partial fixed Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin' do not show anymore P2 inputs for analog controls. Still thinking about Steel Talons.

- 0.114u1: Changed VSync to 59.952038 Hz in Hard Drivin' and clones and 60.311206 Hz in the (compact) versions.

- 0.88: Fixed undersized array causing memory trashing in Hard Drivin' (thanks to Mame32Plus).

- 0.86u3: Aaron Giles fixed the Input Port and reversed pedals now work correctly (e.g., brake in Hard Drivin').

- 0.80: Quench add adjustments for TMS32010 internal data map in Hard Drivin'. Changed TMS32010 clock speed to 5MHz.

- 0.76u1: Aaron Giles added 'Hard Drivin' (cockpit, rev 7)' and clones (cockpit, rev 1), (cockpit, rev 2), (cockpit, Japan, rev 6), (cockpit, Japan, rev 7), (cockpit, British, rev 5), (cockpit, British, rev 6), (cockpit, British, rev 7), (cockpit, German, rev 4), (cockpit, German, rev 7), (compact, rev 1), (compact, British, rev 2) and (compact, German, rev 2). Changed 'Hard Drivin' (cockpit)' to clone '(cockpit, rev 3)' and clone '(compact)' to '(compact, rev 2)'. Renamed (harddriv) to (harddrv3). Added 3rd Player.

- 0.74u2: Added 3rd Player.

- 3rd January 2003: Aaron Giles sent in another update that gets the 34010-based games working again after yesterday's changes, and he fixed BattleToads and Hard Drivin' to compute the VBLANK duration appropriately.

- 0.62: Added clone Hard Drivin' (compact). Aaron Giles added sound to Hard Drivin'. Changed parent description to 'Hard Drivin' (cockpit)'. Added 68000 (8MHz) CPU5, TMS32010 (20MHz) CPU6 and DAC sound, changed visible area to 508x384 and fixed sound1 rom loading.

- 4th October 2002: Aaron Giles updated the TMS34010, TMS32010, ADSP2100 CPU cores with bugfixes and added emulation for ADSP2101 and DSP32C, added sound to Hard Drivin' and got Race Drivin', Steel Talons and Hard Drivin's Airborne mostly working.

- 0.57: Aaron Giles fixed a few TMS34010 bugs, fixing Hard Drivin' crashes.

- 24th October 2001: Aaron Giles fixed a bug in scanline rendering which affected Turbo, and he fixed Hard Drivin' from crashing randomly.

- 0.37b12: Added Hard Drivin' (compact) (Testdriver).

- 27th January 2001: Aaron Giles added another ROM set to the Hard Drivin' driver but it still suffers from a few small quirks.

- 2nd January 2001: Jarek Burczynski optimized the ADSP2100 core a bit, resulting in a 7 % speed gain on some platforms.

- 0.37b9: Aaron Giles and Ernesto Corvi added Hard Drivin' (Atari Games 1988).

- 0.37b8: Aaron Giles added Hard Drivin' (Atari 1988).

- 8th September 2000: Aaron Giles sent in a new TMS34010 core with a few bugfixes, and finally officially sent the Hard Drivin' / S.T.U.N. Runner driver. The latter is perfect, while the former suffers from no sound and a nasty bug causing the car physics go out of control after a crash. Also included was a preliminary Race Drivin' driver, which unfortunately goes weird as soon as the simulation begins.

- 10th August 2000: Aaron Giles did some brilliant work and finally got the polygon graphics working in the preliminary Hard Drivin' / S.T.U.N. Runner driver, which requires about 2 GHz to run properly.

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OutRunners

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Rad Racer

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Hard Drivin'

Race Drivin'

Hard Drivin's Airborne

Street Drivin'

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Cruis'n Exotica

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Sega Rally Championship

Sega Rally 2

Sega Rally 2 DX

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San Francisco Rush: The Rock

San Francisco Rush 2049

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Thrill Drive

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King of Route 66

Faster Than Speed

Romset: 1092 kb / 19 files / 497.5 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Hard Drivin' (cockpit, rev 7)</description>

<manufacturer>Atari Games</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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