HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Test Drive 4'' is a
racing video game Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic rac ...
developed by Pitbull Syndicate and published by Accolade for
PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a di ...
and Microsoft Windows in 1997. It offers 14 supercars and muscle cars, and tasks the player with beating computer opponents in tracks set in real life locales. The game's tracks are long courses with rural roads and urban streets, and commonly feature traffic and short corners. The player has to arrive at each checkpoint (a banner with text such as "Stage 1" or "Stage 2") before the Checkpoint Timer expires, resulting in additional time, and crossing the finish line is required to complete the race. ''Test Drive 4''s commercial success briefly made ''Test Drive'' the best selling racing franchise, but the game received mixed reviews. In 1999 the game was republished under the
Greatest Hits A greatest hits album or best-of album is a type of compilation album that collects popular and commercially successful songs by a particular artist or band. While greatest hits albums are typically supported by the artist, they can also be creat ...
label after selling 850,000 copies within one year of its release.


Gameplay

''Test Drive 4'' offers 14 supercars and muscle cars, and tasks the player with beating computer opponents in tracks set in five real life locales:
Keswick, Cumbria Keswick ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Allerdale Borough in Cumbria, England. Historic counties of England, Historically, until 1974, it was part of Cumberland. It lies within the Lake District National ...
,
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, Bern,
Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ...
, and
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
;''Test Drive 4'' (PlayStation) manual the Windows version adds a sixth location:
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
. The game's tracks are long courses with rural roads and urban streets, and commonly feature traffic and short corners. The player has to arrive at each checkpoint (a banner with text such as "Stage 1" or "Stage 2") before the Checkpoint Timer expires, resulting in additional time, and crossing the finish line is required to complete the race. The police car can chase and stop a player who exceeds the speed limit; to counter this, the player either stops in front of the police car or outruns it. Only a few vehicles are available to the player from the outset, with the rest needing to be won or purchased as the game progresses.''Test Drive 4'' (Windows) manual In singleplayer, the player can participate in a Single Race, a Cup, or a Drag Race. The game also offers multiplayer; the Windows version of the game has three Network Options: serial,
modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...
, and
LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...
, while the PlayStation version supports the
PlayStation Link Cable The PlayStation Link Cable (SCPH-1040) is a peripheral cable for the PlayStation console. Utilizing the serial I/O port found on the back of most PlayStation models, it allows for two consoles to be connected in order to play compatible multiplay ...
.


Development and release

English video game developer Pitbull Syndicate was established in December 1996 by eight experienced programmers and artists. In 1997, the studio designed ''Test Drive 4'' in collaboration with publisher Accolade. According to Accolade president and CEO Jim Barnett, the game exploits 3D graphics to offer a satisfactory driving experience. Its fourteen vehicles were used under license from car designers such as
Chrysler Corporation Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automoti ...
, the owner of the
Dodge Dodge is an American brand of automobiles and a division of Stellantis, based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Dodge vehicles have historically included performance cars, and for much of its existence Dodge was Chrysler's mid-priced brand above P ...
and
Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymout ...
automobile brands. In contrast to multi-lap circuits found in most other racing games, ''Test Drive 4'' only had linear point-to-point courses. The game's race tracks are realistically modeled after real places such as Kyoto, Japan and Washington, DC. The "jumps" in the San Francisco track were inspired by '' San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing''. ''Test Drive 4''s
techno Techno is a Music genre, genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally music production, produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central Drum beat, rhythm is typ ...
-oriented soundtrack includes licensed songs from the bands
Orbital Orbital may refer to: Sciences Chemistry and physics * Atomic orbital * Molecular orbital * Hybrid orbital Astronomy and space flight * Orbit ** Earth orbit Medicine and physiology * Orbit (anatomy), also known as the ''orbital bone'' * Orbito ...
and The Younger, Younger 28's; Accolade executive producer Chris Downend considered the two bands suitable for the game's energetic gameplay style. ''Test Drive 4'' was displayed at the 1997
Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo or Electronic Entertainment Experience in 2021) is a trade event for the video game industry. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) organizes and presents E3, which many developers, publish ...
(E3), and Accolade announced its November release date. Prior to its completion, the publisher spent $2 million dollars on a promotional campaign for the game; television commercials ran on
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
, Speedvision, and
MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
during the final two weeks of November, and radio advertisements appeared on
The Howard Stern Show ''The Howard Stern Show'' is an American radio show hosted by Howard Stern that gained wide recognition when it was nationally syndicated on terrestrial radio from WXRK in New York City, between 1986 and 2005. The show has aired on Howard 100 a ...
in December. Accolade vice president Stan Roach said that the company anticipated the game to be the highest-selling racing title of the winter season (and also its most successful product "in years"), and that the advertisements are the first time they signed promotional deals with broadcasting media since the beginning of the "16-bit market". Accolade published the game on 3 November for PlayStation, and 24 November for Microsoft Windows. The Windows release came in two versions, one with support for
3dfx 3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the ...
video card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer mo ...
s, and another with a software renderer.
Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted th ...
imported its PlayStation version to Japan on 2 April 1998.


Reception


Sales

the game sold over 850,000 copies. Because of its commercial success, the PlayStation version was republished under the
Greatest Hits A greatest hits album or best-of album is a type of compilation album that collects popular and commercially successful songs by a particular artist or band. While greatest hits albums are typically supported by the artist, they can also be creat ...
label. Accolade stated in a press release that the commercial successes of the game and the off-road-themed '' Test Drive Off-Road'' caused ''Test Drive'' to become the top-selling racing series at the time.


Critical reviews

Reviews for ''Test Drive 4'' were divergent, disagreeing on many aspects of the game, and ranged from mediocre to moderately positive. For example, reviewers for ''
Electronic Gaming Monthly ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' (often abbreviated to ''EGM'') is a monthly American video game magazine. It offers video game news, coverage of industry events, interviews with gaming figures, editorial content and product reviews. History The ...
'' (''EGM'') and ''
GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...
'' both felt the inclusion of oncoming cars and police cars help liven up the action and were a distinctive feature of the ''Test Drive'' series, but '' Next Generation'' found them irritating and unfairly difficult to avoid due to the sensitive steering, and concluded that "had developer Pitbull done away with the hazards and just stuck to the driving, ''Test Drive 4'' might have been a decent racer. As it stands, it's just another ''
Need for Speed ''Need for Speed'' (''NFS'') is a racing game franchise published by Electronic Arts and currently developed by Criterion Games, the developers of ''Burnout''. The series generally centers around illicit street racing and tasks players to co ...
''. And nobody needs that, not even EA." The sensitivity of the controls was cited as a problem by most critics, particularly when driving at high speed. ''
IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa dist ...
''s Jaz Rignall added: "Also, the car's weight-shift response is not fluid, so there's no feeling of feedback -- once you lose control, it's very difficult to avoid spinning out." He said the controls are the one issue which made ''Test Drive 4'' a good, rather than great game: "Had ''Test Drive 4'' been more polished and better refined in the handling department, it would have been close to getting a 9. As it stands, it misses out on an 8 by a whisker." Kelly Rickards and Kraig Kujawa of ''EGM'' and Glenn Rubenstein of ''GameSpot'' instead felt what held the game back was that its gameplay is simply too basic and generic to stand out, though Rickards still compared it positively to the ''Need for Speed'' series, calling it "the game ''
Need for Speed II ''Need for Speed II'' is a racing video game released in 1997. It is a part of the Need for Speed, ''Need for Speed'' series and is the second installment, following ''The Need for Speed''. Gameplay Like its The Need For Speed, predecessor, ...
'' should have been." Rickards was among a number of critics who commented positively on the game's clash of modern cars with 1960s
muscle car Muscle car is a description according to ''Merriam-Webster Dictionary'' that came to use in 1966 for "a group of American-made two-door sports coupes with powerful engines designed for high-performance driving." The '' Britannica Dictionary'' ...
s, its diverse locales, and its drag strip. Rubenstein acknowledged that the drag strip is a unique feature in what he nonetheless maintained is an overall generic game. The music was another subject of diverse opinions; ''
GamePro Gamepro.com is an international multiplatform video game magazine media company that covers the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software in countries such as Germany and France. The publication, GamePro, was originally la ...
'' called it "engaging and catchy", but Rignall and Rubenstein both deemed it unexciting and remarked that the use of techno music in racing games seemed to be played out. Where Rickards found the deranged, aggressive driving of the A.I. opponents to be annoying, Rignall argued that it presents an interesting and enjoyable challenge. The graphics, too, saw disagreement among critics; ''EGM'' and ''IGN'' both praised how the car models are highly detailed to the point where they are readily recognizable, while ''Next Generation'' contrarily stated that the detailing is poor and the in-race models are conspicuously less impressive than the ones on the car select screen. ''GamePro'' was the most impressed with ''Test Drive 4''s graphics, summing up, "Easily one of the most highly detailed, graphically superior PlayStation racers to date, ''Test Drive 4'' verges on perfection at every turn, but never quite takes the trophy." ''Test Drive 4'' received "average" reviews on the PlayStation according to the
review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
GameRankings GameRankings was a video gaming review aggregator that was founded in 1999 and owned by CBS Interactive. It indexed over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 video games. GameRankings was discontinued in December 2019, with its staff bei ...
.


Sequel and legacy

Pitbull Syndicate developed a 1998 sequel, '' Test Drive 5''; it features more vehicles and tracks and competed with '' Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit''. Accolade published ''
Test Drive Off-Road 2 ''Test Drive 4X4'' (known as ''Test Drive Off-Road 2'' in North America) is a racing video game co-developed by Accolade's internal development team and Pitbull Syndicate, and published by Accolade for PlayStation and Microsoft Windows. Develo ...
'' in 1998, which uses a modified version of the ''Test Drive 4'' engine and includes licensed off-road vehicles.


References


External links

* {{Authority control 4 1997 video games Accolade (company) games Multiplayer and single-player video games PlayStation (console) games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games set in England Video games set in San Francisco Video games set in Switzerland Video games set in Germany Video games set in Kyoto Video games set in Washington, D.C. Windows games