Hard drivin'


Title		Hard drivin'
Game Type	Driving
Players		1
Compatibility	Not AGA
Submission	Angus Manwaring Profiled Reviewer

Review
Hard drivin' was first seen in tne arcades as a Tengen coin-op and when I
heard it was being converted to the Amiga I was pretty keen, being partial
to the odd polygon. Hard drivin' was fairly unusual, perhaps unique in
that you weren't involved in a car-based shoot out, you' weren't trying to
run people over or escape from anyone, you were just trying to drive a car
round a track, ideally as fast as possible. That doesn't sound very
unusual, but HD handled fairly realistically. If you took that corner at
70, then you were going to run out of road, and in a fairly convincing
manner. Add to this the fact that HD was polygon based, and it felt more
like a simulator than the typical driving game.

You could, as in the coin-op, choose between manual or automatic shift, but
I believe the game would sometimes freeze when you desperately tried to
jab the right numerical key and ended up hitting several by mistake. THere
was also a limited choice of circuits, in that you could drive round the
speed route or the stunt track. At the point these two tracks diverged,
there was a barn complete with a polygon cow. If you drove to close to the
cow it emitted a large "Mooooooo" which was a nice touch. I'm pretty sure
if you achieved the best time on both tracks you got to race the phantom
photon, and if you beat him, then your circuit was shown in between races.

The game supported accelerators, which definitely helped the feel of the
game. Not a bad conversion by Domark, but neither was it a particuarly
compulsive game. The rather tricky control, combined with the idiots
coming straight at you from the other way, albeit on their side of the
road, left me feeling the game was good but not great,


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