Original Driver for PSN next Thurs

By Robert Purchese Published 7 August, 2008

Ubisoft to show what fuss was about.

Ubisoft will re-release the original Driver on the PlayStation Store next Thursday.

The game will cost EUR 4.99 (GBP 3.99), and chauffeur us back 10 years to the heady days of PSone in order to see what all the fuss was about. PSone games on PSN are typically compatible with both PS3 and PSP.

With a Metacritic average of 87 per cent, Driver remains the top-rated game in the series so far, despite numerous attempts by developer Reflections to revive Tanner and his mission-based driving.

Not that Ubisoft has stopped trying. Earlier this month the BBC revealed that Reflections was working on "a whole new version" of Driver.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bad09 #1 4 years ago

    \o/ Good work SCEE now keep the CLASSICS coming and leave crap alone.

  • Zomoniac #2 4 years ago

    The only game I can think of where I haven't been able to get past the tutorial...

  • Tiel #3 4 years ago

    Thought psone games were 3.49.

  • bad09 #4 4 years ago

    @ Zomoniac

    Yeah that was a bitch to do if I remember especially the slalom!

    @ Tiel

    Probably EG's error, bad EG!

  • Floppy #5 4 years ago

    The tutorial was indeed a pain to get through, but ultimately worth it. Well, except for that stupidly hard final mission where the FBI cars aim and crash into you with exocet velocity and precision.

  • Psiloc #6 4 years ago

    Ooh, will have to get this. Good release.

  • muters #7 4 years ago

    It's tempting, but, nyeh, I dunno. I can't help but feel that Driver seemed good at the time simply because the GTA games were still 2D, and the sandbox crime-em-up genre hadn't taken off yet. Maybe it's telling that once it had any competition, every other game in the series I tried was unspeakably bad.

  • spammage #8 4 years ago

    Aren't we due a EU release of PaRappa? I'd buy that for a dollar.

  • HermitArcader #9 4 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • mkreku #10 4 years ago

    I still have the PC version of this! :D

  • Mongoose #11 4 years ago

    Amazing news! This will be going straight on my PSP.

  • ozzit #12 4 years ago

    I wonder if they have fixed the bugs yet?

    Theres one particular one that sometimes occured when watching a replay after successfully completing a mission. For some reason your car hits something that wasnt there the first time around, which stops everything until your car explodes.... at which point the game tells you you've failed and need to do the whole mission again.

    Was a great game (particularly liked the car physics and the fact that hubcaps fell off and rolled away under heavy braking) but it was clearly not finished.
    Edited by 1 at 07/08/08 @ 15:35

  • bad09 #13 4 years ago

    Mongoose you read my mind!!

  • SteveB #14 4 years ago

    This has to have one of the hardest final levels in modern gaming. I could never complete it.

  • carrotcake #15 4 years ago

    I just want FF VII, FF VIII, FF IX.

  • agparrot #16 4 years ago

    Killing the final level did give such a sense of Achievement, though, before those things were synonymous with gamerscore.

    Considering the hardware it was running on, with a full replay of every mission available, it was something of a technical achievement. Outside of its' own franchise, it has taken Halo 3 to offer similar post-mission video options (and in some ways to show how it should be done).

    GTA IV's physics owe much to the first Driver, too, if my thumbs interpret correctly.

  • Agent_Llama #17 4 years ago

    Definitely the best in the series, a great game. But yes, that final level was an utter, utter bitch.

  • bad09 #18 4 years ago

    @ agparrot

    Oh yeah I forgot about the excellent replay movies!

    Also I think you're right about GTA4 being influenced by Driver, it's the first thing that entered my mind jumping into a car.

  • ElNino9 #19 4 years ago

    A fiver?

    PS One games are usually £3.49

    Theiving cunts...

  • johnnybrn #20 4 years ago

    I'll think you find that this game had it time and place.

    I remember the selling point for Driver 2 was roads that curved!

  • megarust #21 4 years ago

    The original driver was a great game. I had so much fun with the replay editor.

  • OnlyMe #22 4 years ago

    I still have Driver on PSone, and it's still a great game. This is a must-buy for me, it's an excellent game to pick up and play - having it available on my PS3 at all time will be great.

  • wewillselfdestruct #23 4 years ago

    @johnnybrn

    I was just thinking that too. All right angle corners are no longer ftw.

  • Feanor #24 4 years ago

    The President's Run resulted in the death of more control pads than any other level in a PS1 game. Probably.
    Edited by 1 at 07/08/08 @ 17:54

  • neonemesis #25 4 years ago

    Take a ride mode was only fun on this game when you activated cheats for invincibility seeing as how you can't ditch your car for another but it was worth it just to jump off hills and slam police barricades metres into the air. In fact, I think the glitches such as collisions sending you flying higher than buildings and that square bit at the end of the golden gate bridge where it was possible to jump the wall and get trapped outside the road made the game hilarious. Good times.

  • Hughes. #26 4 years ago

    Fucked if I'm doing the President's Run ever again. I think I resorted to cheats in the end.

    At least with virtual memory cards I can make one just for Driver, so I don't have to wait 2 minutes for it to load in the save icons of all my other save games on Memory Card 1, one by one; then another 2 minutes to load all of the icons of my save games on Memory Card 2, one by one, after every mission, success or fail, before even asking me if I want to save my replay, which I didn't, and before every time I actually wanted to save, even though my save was the first slot on the first card.

    I'd like to nut-punch the stupid bastard who came up with that idea, and attach electrodes to the nadgers of whoever let it through QA in that state.

  • bioreit #27 4 years ago

    I usually end up playing Driver once or twice a year - my cousin in Gloucester still has it - and I definitely think it's aged very well indeed! It honestly never gets old just having fun and messing about: seeing how many cops you can lead on a merry chase round a car park, or how close you can get without getting rammed into a lamp-post or oddly indestructible bench.

    And the director feature is probably my favourite feature in any game - used to have a screensaver made up of one of my movies, where my car pinwheeled end to end from one alley, across a four-lane road and into another alley, with five cops in hot pursuit.

    'Twas like being in a game based purely on Blues Brothers car-chase scenes.

    Awesome.

    Will definitely get this once I take the plunge and finally get a PS3.