ULTIMATE GUIDE Hard Drivin'
Sometimes the title says it all. With Hard Drivin’ Atari invited players to climb into the ‘ultimate driving simulator’ and ‘put the pedal to the metal’ – to drive hard basically. But players quickly discovered that Hard Drivin’ meant something different. From the starting grid, you’d hit the accelerator and speed up the first hill, then hang a right to the signposted ‘stunt track’ – only for the car to slip off the road and collide with a cow idling beside a barn. As the now-famous cow issued a weary ‘Mooooo’ (the poor thing took a lot of hits), the true meaning of the title dawned on you: it was called Hard Drivin’ because it was bloody hard!
This really was a driving simulator, and not just because the sit-down cab featured an ignition key, four-gear stick shift and forcefeedback steering wheel. If you played Hard Drivin’ like you played RoadBlasters – Atari’s arcade racer from two years prior – then you’d spend a lot of time off-road, with the steering wheel spinning through your fingers and the words ‘WRONG WAY!’
