We’ve seen 3D graphics on the Game Boy Advance at a stable frame rate, and even Quake running on Nintendo’s mighty little handheld. Surely we couldn’t find one more game to make a trilogy of absurdly overachieving handheld games on Nintendo’s final GameBoy system? Well, how about a true, 3D Grand Theft Auto-style experience, with pedestrians, cars, cutscenes, and scripted missions? Who would dare even try such an audacious thing?
Oh, Fernando Velez and Guillaume Dubail, the two guys behind Asterix & Obelix XXL for GBA? Okay then, that tracks.
Driv3r is by far one of the strangest games I’ve ever played. Not in design, but by its simple nature of achieving every goal it sets out to do. It really is a fully 3D GTA game on the GameBoy Advance. You can drive across multiple maps set at multiple times of day with civilian and hostile NPCs milling about. The draw distance is better than some N64 games, boasting complex world textures that really bring the city to life, as does the impressive amount of traffic. It’s almost enough to distract you from the regular mid-mission scrolling text that doubles as both your objectives and tutorials.
Sure, everything that isn’t world geometry is a sprite, but the fact this isn’t just Mode-Seven fake 3D effects like on SNES is incredible. The texture warping is nigh-constant as you drive past buildings, but still, incredible work. This isn’t even getting into how you can walk on-foot and engage in basic third-person shooting. Remember, they had two triggers, two face buttons, a D-pad, and two menu buttons to work with here, beyond the technical limitations. One mode of play was hard enough to fit onto this sort of control scheme – managing two that could be transitioned at any time is nothing short of madness.
To Driv3r’s credit, it works. I played some story content and side missions, exploring its early hours with far greater ease than I expected. Well, perhaps “ease” isn’t the right word here; more like, it’s remarkably possible to get around everywhere, if you have the patience to endure the absolutely masochistic difficulty spikes, which occur every single mission. I’m not exaggerating, Driv3r may be the hardest game I’ve played all year. It really stinks that it controls perfectly well, runs smoothly, and still you can’t just fully enjoy it because it has to beat you over the head with its ruthless expectations.
You need to land every gunshot with maximum accuracy and hold onto any pistol rounds you find. A single bumper to bumper collision with a car that just rendered a little closer than you expected can cost you a tailing mission that starts you right back at the beginning because checkpoints aren’t a thing here. I typically try to avoid using save states when emulating games for work, but they’re practically a necessity for Driv3r.
Where its home console counterpart is infamously a broken mess of glitches and poor design decisions, the GBA version is simply too difficult for its own good. Can you get used to it? Sure. Should you? Debatable. After all, GTA Chinatown Wars exists, and even Velez and Dubail themselves went on to create the vastly more impressive C.O.P.: The Recruit for DS.
Yet as GBA tech showcases go, only unreleased prototypes pushed the system any further than this. For a handheld meant to be nothing more than a SNES in the palm of your hands, Driv3r demonstrates how much untapped potential was left nestled inside, but other developers were far too eager to move on to other hardware rather than push it to the limit. As such, I salute Velez and Dubail for putting in the effort, even if it didn’t quite pay off this time.
