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Driver (video game)

1999 action driving video game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ2293778 ↗
Source-derived summary

Driver (subtitled "You Are the Wheelman" in North America) is an action driving video game and the first installment in the Driver series. Developed by Reflections Interactive and published by GT Interactive, it was released on the PlayStation on 25 June 1999, and was ported to Microsoft Windows on 1 October 1999, and to Classic Mac OS on 12 December 2000 by Abersoft Limited.

The game, inspired by movie car chases, sees players driving around four real-life cities – Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York – using a variety of vehicles, with the plot focusing on the work of an undercover police officer, John Tanner, who infiltrates a criminal outfit to investigate their operations, only to discover a plot by their boss to assassinate the President of the United States.

The game proved a commercial hit upon release, and received favorable reviews from critics. Ports for Microsoft Windows and Mac were released on 1 October 1999 and December 2000. A remake for the Game Boy Color, developed by Crawfish Interactive and published by Infogrames was released in May 2000, while versions for iOS and Palm Pre, developed and published by Gameloft, were released on 8 December 2009. The game was re-released on the PlayStation Network on 14 October 2008. The game's success led to further sequels, including Driver 2 in November 2000 and Driver 3 in June 2004.

Gameplay

The game is played out in four cities: Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, each of which remain only partially faithful to the actual city layouts. A fifth bonus city, Newcastle (where Reflections Interactive is based), is unlockable in the PC version through gameplay and in the PlayStation version using a cheat device, but no missions are available and the playable area is small.

Editorial summary

“Driver (video game)” enters the record as 1999 action driving video game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Driver, video and game can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1999, 2000, 2009, 2008—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1999-06-30, 1999-06-25—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Driver, video and game.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Driver (video game)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Driver, video and game provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2293778. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2000, 2009 and 2008.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Driver (video game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.