than three initials on the high-score board, which players could use to construct sentences on the score board. Development The 3D computer graphics arcade hardware that was eventually used for Hard Drivin began development in the mid-1980s, several years before the game was released. At the time, Atari Games was owned by Namco, and the two companies began working on a 3D arcade system. After Atari and Namco went separate ways, each company developed their own arcade system in the late 1980s, based on the same prototype. Atari used an earlier version of the hardware for Hard Drivin, while Namco developed a more advanced version of the hardware called the Namco System 21, which they used for Winning Run (1988). The development of Hard Drivin began in 1988. Atari also originally intended to release the game in 1988. However, according to one of Atari's engineers and designers, it was delayed due to the dispute from its Vice President claiming that no one would buy an arcade cabinet for $10,000 after The Last Starfighter arcade game was cancelled for that same reason a few years earlier. After weeks of research, it was decided that $10,000 was an acceptable price point. In addition to the main CPU, Hard Drivin uses two TMS34010 32-bit graphics-oriented processors and a digital signal processor. Physics The engine, transmission control, suspension, and tire physics were modeled in conjunction with Doug Milliken who was listed as a test driver in the game credits. In the 1950s his father William Milliken of Milliken Research led a team at Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo NY USA (later Calspan) that converted aircraft equations of motion to equations of motion for the automobile, and became one of the world's leading experts in car modeling. Ports The contemporary home systems Hard Drivin''' was ported to had tremendously less computing power than the arcade machine. These include the Amstrad CPC, Mega Drive / Genesis, and Atari Lynx. The Commodore 64 version was only released as part of the Wheels of Fire compilation. A version for the NES was programmed by Mark Morris, but was unreleased; a ROM of the game can be found online. Reception Atari sold 3,318 Hard Drivin arcade cabinets. In Japan, Game Machine listed Hard Drivin on their June 1, 1989 issue as being the second most successful upright/cockpit arcade cabinet of the month. It went on to become Japan's sixth