Atari's classic Hard Drivin' Arcade Machine - Awesome Driving Simulator from 1988!

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's video games you can see all of our arcade games at Lions arcade.com we are back today with a legend this is a really cool Atari arcade game you don't see too many of these anymore this is hard driving from 1989 when was the last time you saw one of those they released two versions of this there was the cockpit sit down one and then this is the compact they called it compact can you believe that the compact upright one that's still had a seat on it so about the biggest game you can get is a Midway cabinet which is what these over here are like this blitz and then this compact cabinet dwarfs the Midway cabinets I mean it's huge compared to the Midway cabinets and the reason that it's so big this was 1989 Atari was just out of control people I mean they were just doing too much so one thing that they did was when they designed this cabinet they decided that they wanted to put the monitor for whatever reason in the top of the cabinet so the monitor is way up there that's why that sign is so big the monitor is behind it and then it aims down at that mirror see it that's the actual tube that you're looking at it aims at that mirror so that you can see it and by doing that they made it where it looks real deep so you can see you can get that little effect it looks like the monitor's sunk way back in the cabinet this was their compact version really cool cabinet but for a while there Atari was just making stuff that was just very unique just different than the way everybody else was doing things and uh this is certainly no exception really cool game and a really cool cabinet so anyway this came out 1989 and it was as you can see the world's first driving simulation game there were driving simulators before this but this was the first kind of 3D one where it was realistic and it was an arcade game blah blah blah so it had realistic stick shift option they had a five-way shifter gears 1 2 3 4 and neutral and the Atari logo on the front of it and then it had a stunt track with a 360 Loop you'll see that in a bit and it had feedback steering and it had 3D Graphics now if you meet young people and they play this they just don't get it they don't understand why anybody would like this game because compared to some of the stuff that's out now the graphics are really basic but if you were around in 1989 when this came out this was the most advanced thing out it was like almost like an event to play the thing I mean if you went in the arcade it would be like a dollar a play and adults would play it I mean it was just it was it was so much like driving a real car um that it was just different than most of the games that were out so it's really more of a simulator than it is like a traditional um arcade style driving game like the ones that came later like cruising USA or something like that um so I'll show you a little bit of the controls because they wanted to make it very realistic it's got a manual or an automatic transmission so you've got a Gas Pedal brake pedal clutch pedal okay most driving games whenever you hit the brake pedal it just on a driving arcade game it'll just fall all the way to the floor like the gas pedal does well Atari thought that wasn't that real wasn't very realistic so what they did was they designed a special brake setup so if you see if you watch the brake pedal only has about an inch of play and the reason that they did that was because they wanted it to be realistic and if you think about it in a in a car uh whenever you hit the brakes in a real car you've only got about an inch of play until it they grab the wheels and then the harder you press the pedal the more the brakes work that's how a real car works well then if you think about driving arcade games most of them aren't made that way you can just go full on or full off or even if it's got a analog uh adjustment they're just they're not that natural so the way they made that natural was they only made it where the pedal could move an inch and then the weight of your foot starts bending the pedal very slightly and they put a what's called a strain gauge on the metal on the back of the pedal so that it can detect just a slight variance in how straight the pedal is so as the weight of your foot starts to bend the pedal it knows that you're pushing harder on the pedal uh than if your foot's just resting on it so you can drive the game and just barely touch the brakes and it's it's like in a real car you can kind of Coast on the brakes you know which slows you down a little bit or you can slam on the brakes and it'll you know go to a skid stop so that it was very different than anything anybody ever did before then or since and it's broke a lot of times to be honest a lot of times that that'll break but this cabinet here we've got it all fixed up and that strain gauge still works fine so but there was only one track on this game uh it was split into two so you could go two different ways one way you went was the speed track you just Tred to go as fast as you could and there was a few turns and jumps and stuff like that and then the other way was the stunt track which had a big 360 Loop which at the time everybody thought was just the coolest thing ever and he's about about to go up it right now actually on the attract mode all right 10 hardest drivers there they are Foot Loose Mustang Sally Lead Foot no 55 but they were clever so this is hard driving this game was so popular and was so different than anything else that came out that they made about a dozen different variations of hard driving cuz they released it all over the world so different countries they had to change the language and and things like that and actually if you play it like in England uh if you play it an English version you would drive on the left side of the road like like people do in England and uh it was actually very successful they released a sequel to it called race driving so there was hard driving and there was race driving and race driving you had three tracks which was a big deal for the simulator at least you know um and then they also released a panoramic version if you've ever seen that I think it was just for race driving but it might have been for hard driving too you sat down in a cockpit and you had a screen in front of you a screen to the left of you that showed out the left side of your car and a screen to the right of you that showed out the right side of your car this is very top-of-the-line crazy stuff now very hard to find one of those I haven't seen one in years but they're still around if you look online you can see pictures of them and things so there you have it that is a com compact hard driving and we've got it running pretty good so what I will do is set up the tripod and we'll play through it a little bit and you can see what the game play is like all right folks I have the tripod precariously placed here so we'll see how this works says above you can see a map of the hard driv and racetrack composed of an outer speed track and an inner stunt Loop so here's part of the stunt loop we're just watching it on a track we'll watch watch the computer do its thing the computer will probably be a much better driver than me because this is one of the toughest freaking games ever released in my opinion at the time the graphics were like top of the line I mean this was like just the coolest stuff ever it was a step back because it you know the 2D stuff that was out looked better you know at the time you had stuff like aari Warriors and stuff like that out that looked real cool and Double Double Dragon things like that but then this came out and it was completely in 3D from like a first-person point of view which was just mind-blowing combining an accurate model of race car handling with true 3D graphics and force feedback controls you can't get closer to the thrill of Real Racing without a fireproof suit whatever really selling it weren't they see and all of the all of the gauges down at the bottom actually work while you drive some of the things don't make any sense like you can run out of gas but you don't run out of gas so um some of that stuff's kind of weird and to start the car every time you wreck they show a replay of the wreck and then you have to restart the car with the with the ignition key because again they were trying to make it very realistic so we'll go ahead and start it and we'll see where I can get now you can do you know clutch or automatic I'm definitely doing automatic because this game is hard enough turn key to [Music] start and this guy the green guy always gets in your way like he always you know riding the brakes and stuff we'll try the speed track first I'm trying to stay away from the guy a little [Music] bit you have to go fast enough though um so that you make it you got to beat the train there's a train there's actually one outside of my building right now but there there's an actual train in the game and you have to go fast enough to beat the train uh to the uh Crossing [Music] oh spun out and you can only be off road for 10 seconds with before it uh basically stalls you [Music] out I'm going the wrong way in I think it thinks I'm still Offroad [Music] that did not go good s was going the right way what are they talking about all right let's try it again [Music] I'm trying not to spin out and I don't like really using the brakes cuz it slows you down so much okay I think this is where I screwed up before [Music] I'm going 80 it [Music] says and basically you're trying to get to the [Music] checkpoint and I've already set it on Easy by the way in the uh test menu I guess you don't have to beat the train I guess it's not moving maybe I should get on it extend to play yeah so I'm going do I'm going do that same course again the speed course cuz the stunt course you basically the stunt is you just wreck over and over again and if you get good enough on the speed course I think you get to go to like a championship round where you race the uh the best time or something I'm going a little faster this time cut that guy [Music] off I think I'm going to run out of time I've been taking it too easy [Music] oh game over again as you can see it's a very challenging [Music] game race to the checkpoint for extra time and the finish line for extended play all right so this time we'll take the uh we'll take the stunt track see the guy riding the brakes I hate that crap if you hit them you wreck you know look at this look look at [Music] this there's the famous cow if you hit the cow it like moves at you or something oh whoa whoa all right so you kind of got to pay attention to the speed limit like see how it says 60 if you go too much more than 60 you'll wreck going over this jump when you land 60 is like where you need to be to land on the down on the down ramp if you go over that thing like a 100 you'll overshoot it and then you die but the loop well it says 62 I think it said 60 minimum so I'm going to try going faster though and I hope there's nobody in my Lane all right now this one's the bad one oh okay I made it all right all right we're good [Music] [Music] m is always in your way oh replay time I got to start my hoopie back up it's actually a Ferrari it's not really a hoopie [Music] you kind of got to stay in the right oh man I spun out see if it'll let me back on the [Music] road there we go we made it back on sweet and I didn't make the [Music] [Laughter] checkpoint so close all right we're going to try it again one last time look at this crap I guess I can pass them and then go back around in front of them I might experiment with that a little bit [Music] so they're saying 60 I'm going try to be around that oh might oh oh oh oh barely made [Music] it okay I'm I'm going go ahead on this Lane and hopefully nobody's on this side all [Music] right oh whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you kind of got to stay at the top of this because there's a green truck that comes in that lane at the end of the ramp that you you'll run into there it is I must be faster this time around cuz he was a little [Music] late and it kind of helps you to pay attention of the speed limits so basically I'm joining the speed track back you know that's where if I would have took the speed track I just join back up with it [Music] uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh better go around the barn instead of through the barn uhoh uh-oh uh-oh yeah yeah that was bad let's see if we can get the cow for everybody oh [Music] no no that probably wasn't good and I'll overshoot the ramp show you what that [Music] does that's pretty violent okay cool well there you have it that is atari's hard driving looking cool still working in 1989 still up and running this is just one of about 40 games we've got in I got a few of them turned on right now but we've got a whole room full of games here and uh we usually buy them broke and we fix them up and then sell them but we like to uh shoot videos of them just so you can see some of the cool stuff that maybe nobody's seen for a while I haven't played one of these in a long time so it was cool getting one of those in that we could fix up by the time you see this video this game may already be sold but maybe we'll have another one or maybe we'll have something else that you're interested in you can see all of our videos at Lions arcade.com I mean all of our games that we have available at Lions arcade.com you can see all of our videos that we shoot uh here on YouTube If you subscribe to us and if you want you can just stop by our shop we're in downtown Rock Hill South Carolina that's about 15 minutes south of Charlotte North Carolina and we've got a whole bunch of games for sale and we sell classic video games and all kinds of fun stuff so we will see you next video