So a gaming history YouTuber claimed that Star Fox was the first 3D polygon game to achieve mainstream popularity. But I’m afraid he’s wrong.
Hard Drivin’ beat Star Fox to market by four years. Released in 1989, it was a massive arcade hit that sold 3,318 cabinets. It was one of the highest selling arcade games of both 1989 and 1990.
It would later get a port to Amiga, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, DOS, Genesis, Lynx, and Commodore 64.
Hard Drivin’ spawned several sequels. It also inspired several polygonal racing games such as Virtua Racer, Ridge Racer, and Screamer.
Sadly, Hard Drivin’s impact is hard to understand by today’s gamers because its true impact could only be appreciated in arcades. At the time, home ports simply couldn’t handle the game’s high demands, and frame rates suffered as a result.
Unless you’re one of the lucky few to find a working cabinet, the only way to appreciate Hard Drivin’ is with a MAME arcade emulator running on PC.
Nevertheless, here’s how the original arcade version of Hard Drivin’ looked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afvEPDHfu_E
Chris Trottier /
npub1je…ujglm
2023-10-07 23:39:55
Author Public Key
npub1jeqcnv0u9nyz8vjknegr2p62f54hfm3v9srudwq4rzarz4tqwk7qlujglmPublished at
2023-10-07 23:39:55Event JSON
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"content": "So a gaming history YouTuber claimed that Star Fox was the first 3D polygon game to achieve mainstream popularity. But I’m afraid he’s wrong. \n\nHard Drivin’ beat Star Fox to market by four years. Released in 1989, it was a massive arcade hit that sold 3,318 cabinets. It was one of the highest selling arcade games of both 1989 and 1990.\n\nIt would later get a port to Amiga, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, DOS, Genesis, Lynx, and Commodore 64. \n\nHard Drivin’ spawned several sequels. It also inspired several polygonal racing games such as Virtua Racer, Ridge Racer, and Screamer.\n\nSadly, Hard Drivin’s impact is hard to understand by today’s gamers because its true impact could only be appreciated in arcades. At the time, home ports simply couldn’t handle the game’s high demands, and frame rates suffered as a result. \n\nUnless you’re one of the lucky few to find a working cabinet, the only way to appreciate Hard Drivin’ is with a MAME arcade emulator running on PC.\n\nNevertheless, here’s how the original arcade version of Hard Drivin’ looked.\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afvEPDHfu_E",
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