"A game that you could line a litter-box with..."

I really don't know how anyone could like this game. Let's face it Hard Drivin', the arcade game, wasn't all that great... so you know some idiot thought a home conversion would be a great idea.

Tech 1 - ''Hard Drivin' is doing poorly in Arcades!''
Tech 2 - ''Maybe dumb American kids will like it!''
Tech 1 - ''We make game! For great justice!''

And thus Hard Drivin' for Sega Genesis was born and what a ride it was.

Consider this: What makes a driving game fun/playable?

1) Good control
2) Speed

Consider this: What makes a drving game crap/unplayable?

1) Poor control
2) Speed... in the eyes of a snail.

Hard Drivin' fullfills both requirements for a crappy driving game. Control is a crucial element of any game and in Hard Drivin' the control is as fluid as a bag of rocks. I've met ex-girlfriends who have been more responsive than this game. Basic turns like ''Turning Left'' and ''Turning Right'' are near impossible to pull off. In a real car, driving like this would kill you within seconds. Hard Drivin' is no different. You'll play for a few seconds before you can no longer safely operate your vehicle. Sadly, the virtual driver always ends up dead, tire tracks littering the road as though you were drunk and swerving from lane to lane in a vain effort to control your car.

Speed is also a crucial element. This game has no speed. You do move, but it's almost in Matrix Bullet time... that is until you need to turn... of course, we already know about turning.

Of course, no driving game is complete without crisp, clean graphics that put you in the heat of the racing action. In Hard Drivin', the polygonal worlds of the ancient Cthuluh are you racing grounds and the work of H.P. Lovecraft is your scene. In a word, wow. In this case ''wow'' is an acronym from ''Why, Oh, Why''?

So what we have here in Hard Drivin' is a game that features a 3-D polygonal world of horror, speed that would take your breath away... as you hold in in anticipation of going over 25 mph, and controls that are so unbelievably bad that friends will wonder if you've unplugged they're control when they weren't looking. Does the game have any merit at all? Yes, it comes in a plastic clamshell case that is perfect for replacing other borken cases... oh, that and you can brek the cartridge easily with almost any solid object.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/02, Updated 08/05/02