Night Driver

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Night Driver

Developer(s)	Atari Inc.
Publisher(s)	Atari Inc.
Designer(s)	Dave Shepperd s/w; Ron Milner,Steve Mayer,Terry Fowler h/w
Release date(s)	October 1976
Genre(s)	Racing
Mode(s)	1 Player
Platform(s)	Arcade, Atari 2600, Commodore 64
Input	Steering wheel, gas pedal, gear shift (1-4)
Arcade cabinet	Upright and cockpit
Arcade system(s)	CPU: M6502 (@ 1.008 MHz), Sound Chips : Discrete (@ 1.008 MHz)
Arcade display	23 inch Raster resolution 256×256 (Horizontal) Palette Colors 2

Night Driver is a 1976 arcade game by Atari Inc. It is the original first-person racing game.

The player controls a car which must be driven along a road at nighttime without crashing into the sides of the road as indicated by road side reflectors. The coin operated game had a choice of three tracks from which the player could choose at game start. The turns were sharper and more frequent on the more difficult tracks.

Due to limitation of arcade technology at the time, the car the player is driving is not actually drawn by the game. Instead, the car is a printed plastic insert that is laid under the screen.

There were two versions of the cabinet manufactured, an upright and a cockpit. The upright version had a blacklight installed inside the cabinet which illuminated the bezel.

[edit] Ports

After the success of the arcade, Rob Fulop ported the game over to Atari's home system at the time, the Atari 2600, and the Commodore 64.

The Atari version uses the paddles to control the vehicle. The player pushes the fire button to accelerate the car forward, and uses the paddle to steer the vehicle, although it was not possible to shift gears in this version. Every frame the program toggles drawing either the vehicle and road hazards or the road posts that defined the track. This causes the game graphics to flicker continually. The game offers eight different levels. Some of the levels are timed, and the player tries to score as much as they can in 90 seconds, and others are not timed. The consumer port also added features not present in the coin operated version such as additional vehicles the player must avoid as well as showing houses and trees along the sides of the road.

The Commodore 64 version is called Night Drive.

[edit] Trivia

Also in 1976, Midway gained rights to a game called Midnight Racer, a game that is remarkably similar in theme and design to Night Driver. Later that year they released it under the name 280 ZZZAP.
The game appeared in the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead