Hard Drivin' - Arcade

Hard Drivin' (c) 1988 Atari Games.

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

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 modeling. Doug and his father wrote the book on car modeling.

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'.

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

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