In 1999 the game was republished under the Greatest Hits label after selling 850,000 copies within one year of its release. Test Drive 4 is a 1997 racing video game developed by Pitbull Syndicate and published by Accolade for PlayStation and Windows.

The Story Behind Test Drive 4

Electronic Arts imported its PlayStation version to Japan on 2 April 1998. 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". Test Drive 4s techno-oriented soundtrack includes licensed songs from the bands Orbital and The Younger, Younger 28's; Accolade executive producer Chris Downend considered the two bands suitable for the game's energetic gameplay style.

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. The game's race tracks are realistically modeled after real places such as Kyoto, Japan and Washington, DC.

How Test Drive 4 Plays

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 game also offers multiplayer; the Windows version of the game has three Network Options: serial, modem, and LAN, while the PlayStation version supports the PlayStation Link Cable. In 1999 the game was republished under the Greatest Hits label after selling 850,000 copies within one year of its release.

Because of its commercial success, the PlayStation version was republished under the Greatest Hits label. 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. The game's tracks are long courses with rural roads and urban streets, and commonly feature traffic and short corners.

Why Players Still Load It Up

Pitbull Syndicate developed a 1998 sequel, Test Drive 5; it features more vehicles and tracks and competed with Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit. The music was another subject of diverse opinions; GamePro 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. For example, reviewers for Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) and GameSpot 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 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 should have been." Rickards was among a number of critics who commented positively on the game's clash of modern cars with 1960s muscle cars, its diverse locales, and its drag strip. Accolade published Test Drive Off-Road 2 in 1998, which uses a modified version of the Test Drive 4 engine and includes licensed off-road vehicles. 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.

Test Drive 4 — Frequently Asked Questions