The Driver Series

Growing up in the 1990's meant that video games were pretty much a part of every child's life, whether they could be played on the computer or on video game systems. One of the most popular games of the very late 1990's was Driver. The first installment of this series of games was released in June of 1999, at the very end of the decade, and has since seen four other installments released with one more on its way for a total of five games on the market so far. The series of games was released on PlayStation, Game Boy Color, Windows, Macintosh and the PlayStation Network.

The first game in the series is titled Driver: You are the Wheelman. The main character, Officer Tanner, is an NYPD detective who has gone undercover to catch criminals in four different cities; Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. The game was designed to look like the 60s and 70s car chase movies that were released in the United States and the basic plot or theme of the game seemed to be based on the movie The Driver, which was released in 1978 and directed by Walter Hill. The gamer could play various game modes, including undercover mode, pursuit, escape, checkpoint and carnage.

The second game in the Driver series is titled Driver 2: The Wheelman is Back. The second game of this series gave the main character, Officer Tanner, new abilities that make the game play a lot more versatile to the gamer. The gamer is now able to remove Tanner from his vehicle and walk him around the city to commandeer other vehicles and drive them. Tanner and his partner, Tobias Jones, are tracking Pink Lenny, who is a member of a Chicago gang. The cities in Driver 2 include Chicago, Havana, Las Vegas and Rio de Janeiro.

The third game in the Driver series is known as Driver 3 or Driv3r. The game's location originates in Miami but then moves to Nice, France and Istanbul, Turkey. The plot of this game in the series is for Tanner and Jones to infiltrate a crime ring that specializes in stealing vehicles. The fourth game in the series, Driver: Parallel Lines, was released in North America in March of 2006. This game takes place only in one city, instead of three or four throughout the game, in New York City. The catch with being in only one city during the game is that in the middle of the game the scene shifts from New York in the present day to New York in 1978.

The next installment in the Driver series has yet to be released but is supposedly in the works as we write this article. The new game in the series, rumored to be titled Driver: The Recruit, will be released on PlayStation 3. A film based on the video game series Driver was supposed to enter into production in 2007 in Toronto, Canada but problems arose and production had to be put on hold for the time being.

TJ Michaels is a console technician who writes for http://www.psr1.com, the experts for Wii repair.