road rather than a fixed view. The development of Night Driver was led by Dave Shepperd at Atari, who was given an assignment to develop a first-person driving video game. Shepperd stated he "was given a piece of paper with a picture of a game cabinet that had a small portion of the screen visible" which he recalls being possibly "a German game" but "never saw the game play" other than "that there were a few little white squares showing." Shepperd used that concept to develop Night Driver. That the car is driving at night provided an excuse for the minimal graphics, as most features (like the street and buildings) aren't visible in the dark. While he did not know the title of the German game at the time, it was later identified as the coin-op Nürburgring 1, a first-person driving video game released earlier in 1976. Atari used some of the leftover arcade cabinets from Hi-way (1975), a top-down vertically scrolling racing game, for Night Driver. Release The arcade game began production in October 1976. Atari demonstrated the game at the AMOA show in November 1976, where it was one of several driving games demonstrated by Atari along with Sprint 2 and Namco's electro-mechanical F-1; the most talked-about driving game at the show was . Night Driver also drew comparisons to Midway Manufacturing's Midnight Racer (later re-branded Datsun 280 ZZZAP) at the same show and an earlier German night driving video game (Nürburgring 1) demonstrated at the German IMA show in Spring 1976. Ports Atari released a port for the Atari VCS (later renamed to the Atari 2600) in 1980. It was programmed by Rob Fulop, who added color, displaying the player vehicle, additional vehicles the player must avoid, and showing houses and trees along the sides of the road. The paddle controller steers the vehicle; holding the button accerlates. It is not possible to shift gears in this version. There are eight variations, some of which are timed and the player tries to score as much as they can in 90 seconds. Commodore published a version for the Commodore 64 in 1982. Reception In Japan, it was the tenth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1976. In the United States, according to Play Meter magazine, Night Driver was the sixth highest-earning arcade video game of 1977. According to RePlay magazine, it was the seventh highest-earning arcade video game of