Driver (series)

Driver is a series of mission-based driving video games developed by Reflections Interactive (now Ubisoft Reflections), and originally published by GT Interactive and later by Atari. The gameplay consists of a mixture of action, driving, and third-person shooting in open world environments. Since the series began in 1999 there have been five installments released.

Driver
The first game of the Driver series was released for the PlayStation on June 30, 1999 in the US. It was later released for Game Boy Color in May 2000, Microsoft Windows in September 2000, Mac OS in December 2000, and iOS in December 2009. In the game you play as an undercover police officer named Tanner. It featured a storyline set in the 1970s and based in four real-life cities; Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. It was the best selling game of the Driver series and an evolution of the freedom to explore a city as brought forth in the early Grand Theft Auto games.

Driver 2
The second installment in the Driver series was released for the PlayStation on November 13, 2000 in the US by Infogrames (now known as Atari), and later ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2002. It featured Officer Tanner once more, along with a new partner, Detective Tobias Jones, in four more real-life cities (Chicago, Havana, Las Vegas, and Rio De Janeiro). It was the first game in the series to feature 2-player modes, curved roads, and the ability to get out of your car at any time in order to steal another car on the street.

Driv3r
The third installment in the Driver series and the first to get an M Rating by the ESRB (the first two were rated T), was released for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox on June 21, 2004 in the United States to generally mixed or poor reviews (despite new features such as the ability to use firearms). The game takes place in Miami, Nice and Istanbul. It was subsequently followed by versions for the PC, and Game Boy Advance. The game sold rather well despite poor reviews, and Reflections paid notice to the complaints about the insipid story line, poor controls, and abundance of glitches in order to improve the series' standings with critics and gamers in the fourth installment of the series.

Driver: Parallel Lines
The fourth game in the series, Driver: Parallel Lines, was released March 14, 2006 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and June 2007 for PC and Wii. It is the most violent of the series—the first one to receive an 18 rating in the UK. Reflections intended Parallel Lines to "return the series to its roots" by focusing more on driving.

The game differs greatly in other aspects from its predecessors, though, as the story no longer follows undercover police officer Tanner and the game takes place in only one location, New York City. The new main player's name is TK, a criminal rather than a cop. The game includes two time periods, 1978 and 2006, when the main player is sentenced to prison for 28 years and returns in 2006. The game received mediocre reviews and, unlike Driv3r, did not sell particularly well.

Driver: San Francisco
A new Driver game has long been rumored to be in production. After several years of speculation, Ubisoft finally unveiled Driver: San Francisco at E3 2010. The game follows series protagonist Tanner after he's suffered an accident that has left him in a coma. The player will thus control Tanner during his coma dream.

Mobile games
Driver: Vegas (released in 2006) and Driver: LA Undercover (released in 2007) are two mobile-exclusive games featuring Officer Tanner, the protagonist of the first three Driver's. Vegas features his exploits in Las Vegas in an attempt to exact revenge on Jericho after Driv3r, while LA Undercover (set two years later), features Tanner's exploits in Los Angeles to take down the Los Angeles Mafia by working his way up the ladder.

Driver 76
Driver 76 is a PlayStation Portable exclusive game in the Drivers series/ Set in New York City in 1976, two years before the events in the first half of Driver: Parallel Lines, you take the role of Ray, TK's friend and a supporting character from Parallel Lines. The game was developed by Sumo Digital and Reflections, and was released on May 11, 2007.

C.O.P. The Recruit
On November 3, 2009, Ubisoft released C.O.P. The Recruit for Nintendo DS. It was originally registered under numerous names, one of which being "Driver: The Recruit".

Film adaptation
In February 2003, Impact Pictures, the production team of Paul W.S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt, announced that it had acquired the film and TV rights to adapt the Atari video game Driver. Screenwriters James DeMonaco, Todd Jason Harthan, and James Roday were developing a script at the time. Impact Pictures had originally intended to produce the film Driver to coincide with the release of the video game Driver 3. The following November, Impact Pictures announced its plans to produce a $50 million adaptation of Driver after wrapping up principal photography on Resident Evil: Apocalypse. In April 2006, Rogue Pictures acquired the film rights to Driver from Impact Pictures and Constantin Films, the production companies responsible for the Resident Evil film franchise. Roger Avary replaced the original screenwriters in writing the script for Driver, as well directing the film.

Prior to January 2007, Driver, having a budget of $48 million, was slated to shoot at Cinespace Studios' MT28 lot in Toronto, Canada. Due to a waterfront revitalization project, the studio has been forced to move and the film has been put on hold. In May 2009, the movie script was leaked on internet.