Duration: 5:48

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Driver was a very landmark game for its time. While the original GTA made the idea of an open-world driving game mainstream, the original incarnation was topdown. This was done primarily for performance reasons as trying to render a complete 3D city for a car to drive in was a very tall order for the hardware of its day. That's why the original Driver on the PS was so landmark. A platform that shouldn't have been able to run a game like that was not only running, but it was actually playable and fun, and didn't feel like a tech demo. Granted, the developers at Reflections Studio made a lot of sacrifices to get the game running on that hardware. Very simple 3D models, low draw distance, and very low-res textures. But their efforts paid off. For those who wanted a 3D open-world driving game, Driver became the must-own game.

Now, because PC's, even by this time, now had a much more solid reputation for its CPU power, and new-found GPU abilities via 3DFX, the PC's could render such a world without as much constraint as like on the PS. Midtown Madness was already showing that a scaled-down version of Chicago could be rendered playable for those who had powerful enough systems. Such, why not Driver? Driver was ported to the PC, and in my opinion, this game was another justification for owning a PC with GPU acceleration. You get MULTIPLE cities with Driver. There is Miami, NYC, Las Angles, and San Fransico. Now granted, they're very scaled back. But considering that open world driving games weren't really a thing up to this point, who cares! Those who want to recreate the awesome car chase scenes that were prominent of various late 60's/70's movies, Driver is a must. The races in this game can get very intense. San Fransico in particular, with their landmark Hillstreet's, provide quick and awesome visuals for those wanting to do some epic chases. Steve McQueen in Bullitt, anyone?

Not surprisingly, this game has no issue running on a Ryzen, even in a virtual environment. While 86Box is capable enough of playing Driver, I wanted to go all out graphics-wise, uncompromised. Game compatibility using SoftGPU is either a hit-or-miss. However, for Driver, it's a very massive hit indeed!

VirtualBox 7.0 is virtualizing a multimedia gaming configuration with a single CPU core allocated to it (host is an AMD Ryzen 5 5500 6-Core Processor Running at 4.2HGHz), 512MB's of RAM, a VESA 1.2 Compatible Display Adapter with 3D Acceleration enabled via Passthrough with SoftGPU. An AC'97 Intel 82801AA Audio Device is installed with the appropriate drivers. Also installed is an AMD PCnet NIC. Windows 98SE is installed in the VM

Songs Used:
05 - 70's Funk Song By
Allister Brimble
Driver - You
Are The Wheelman

Software Used:
Recorded With OBS Studio
Composed In Kdenlive

Hardware Used:
PC equipped with a
AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU
6 Cores Running At 4.2GHz
AMD Radeon RX570 GPU
Windows 11