Trivia / Driver

• All-Star Cast: DRIV3R infamously made a point to feature one, with the likes of Michael Madsen as Tanner, Mickey Rourke as Jericho, and Ving Rhames, Michelle Rodriguez and Iggy Pop in other roles.
• Creator Backlash: The developers for the first game state in a podcast that they made the tutorial mission far too hard for the wrong reasons and game design like that would not fly in today's modern game design. Because they had no focus group, one of the developers said that he thought if he could beat the tutorial in 23 seconds, then having a time limit of 60 seconds was "too much" and admits that he was completely wrong in retrospect. They also mention that if the game was made today, they would have had given the player to option to move onto the game itself if they failed the tutorial five times.
• Development Hell: The movie. Pulp Fiction scribe Roger Avary wrote several drafts before the project was cancelled. In his own words: "In the Driv3r game, Timmy Vermicelli was a joke character based on Tommy Vercetti, the character from GTA III. ^note Vercetti is actually the protagonist of Vice City, not III So I made Timmy the villain, who kills Tanner, who would be played by Michael Madsen who voiced the character in the game. Tanner's son, Driver, hunts the killer around the world for revenge, eventually ending up in Iraq, where the mob has been hired by the U.S. government as a subcontractor of drugs and prostitution in the green zone. The basic idea is that Vermicelli drives around shooting people in Iraq, much like GTA, but it always gets blamed on insurgents — so he does it with impunity. Think of the movie as GTA set in Bagdad." After submitting extensive storyboards to the producers, a higher-up from the studio came down and insisted the movie be made for $40 million. The project was dead less than a week later. Avary has commented that seeing Drive (2011) "nullified my need to make the film."
• Dueling Games:
  • With Grand Theft Auto in 2001, started almost entirely by GTA. However, Driver wasn't really good as a GTA clone, which led to the third game's mockery by critics and even Rockstar Games themselves in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Driver: San Francisco smartly dropped the GTA pretenses by becoming a pure open world racer with no on-foot controls, instead making car-switching easier with the Shift mechanic that made the game stand out.
  • At its heyday, it dueled with Midtown Madness, both being 3D open-world driving games, and despite Midtown Madness being published by Microsoft, Driver won out in mainstream recognition until GTA came along while Midtown Madness, despite having two games at the time, stuck being an obscure Cult Classic.
• Dummied Out: Infamously, the black-striped yellow car featured in screenshots and early previews for the first game was completely removed from the final product, with the Chevy Chevelle-esque dark grey car taking its place (this change was made as early as the first playable demo from circa February 1999). Furthermore, the closing credits feature a replay based in a city modelled on developer Reflections' hometown of Newcastle upon Tyne (albeit with cars driving on the right instead of the left due to engine limitations), though this level was likely never intended to be playable anyway.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Getting a hold of all the games in the series is complicated, to say the least:
  • The only way to buy the first game right now is on the PSN for the PlayStation 3.
  • Driver 2 hasn't seen any re-release, but you can play it on PC thanks to an unofficial source port based on reverse engineering of the PS1 version.
  • DRIV3R hasn't seen any release since the 2005 PC port. Considering the game's awful reputation thanks to its unfinished state and the controversy that exploded after fans found out that Atari paid reviewers to give the game high scores while ignoring all the problems, it's safe to assume this game will remain buried for a long time.
  • Driver: Parallel Lines is the easiest one to get (at least on PC). You can buy it on GOG, Steam, and Ubisoft Connect and it gets discounted quite often (especially on Ubisoft Connect).
  • Driver 76 hasn't seen any re-release. Sony shutting down the PSP store doesn't help matters.
  • Driver: San Francisco got removed from all digital stores in 2016 and there is no sign of a re-release. You can play it on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S but only if you can track down an original 360 disc.
  • Driver: Renegade hasn't been ported to any system since the original 3DS release. With Nintendo announcing that the 3DS store will be shut down in 2023, you may want to get a copy before prices start to go up.
  • And you can forget about Driver: Vegas and Driver L.A.: Undercover unless you track down an old Java phone with the games already installed.
• Working Title: An early trailer for DRIV3R (namely, the one included in Stuntman) spelt out the game's title as the more conventional "Driver 3".

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