Category: Video Games

Driver, which first launched in June 1999, was unlike anything that had come before it. These days it seems less common for a game to come along and establish the foundations of what’s essentially a brand new sub-genre, but wind the clock back a couple of decades and it was happening with steady regularity. In the scheme of driving games, Driver was truly one-of-a-kind.

Driver did more than just take the brash, car chase gameplay from the original top-down Grand Theft Auto games and bring it to life in 3D – it distilled the mayhem of some of Hollywood’s greatest ever car chase classics and made them playable.

Smokey and the Bandit, The Blues Brothers, The Cannonball Run, Bullitt – the team took inspiration from countless car chase classics. Martin Edmondson was particularly passionate about them; Walter Hill’s 1978 film The Driver was one of the first movies he ever saw at a cinema.

The Driver, a minimalist neo-noir action thriller set in the underbelly of LA, was not particularly successful upon its release – but it has amassed an admirable legacy. It didn’t just inspire Driver, that is; Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film Drive respectfully shares several thematic similarities, it was a core inspiration for Edgar Wright’s 2017 film Baby Driver, and it’s been referenced on multiple occasions by Quentin Tarantino.

The Driver’s influence on Driver the game goes far beyond the name, too. The infamous garage test at the beginning of Driver’s story mode was directly inspired by a strikingly similar scene in The Driver, where Ryan O’Neal’s unnamed getaway driver meticulously mangles a Mercedes (all while still keeping it drivable) in a calculated display of his precision driving abilities. The twist in Driver is that players are punished for denting the car. Ironically, doing so will trigger the very same car crash sound effect specifically used in this very scene in The Driver (alongside a host of other car chase movies from the ’70s and ’80s, mostly from 20th Century Fox).

Driver’s garage test is regarded by some as harder than any mission in the game that followed, although I can’t imagine that’s a sentiment that any Driver fan who actually played the game’s finale would share (‘The President’s Run’ is monumentally more difficult than the garage test). Playing and completing the test for the first time in many, many years, I can’t help but wonder whether its reputation as an uncommonly gruelling challenge is a little overblown. Admittedly, Driver was essentially a religion for me during the last year-or-so of the original PlayStation so I’m not the best gauge – but I’ll note my 15-year-old son needed just four cracks to beat it, playing on original hardware. So I can’t say it stumped him, either.

That said, if you did in fact bounce off Driver because of its unfriendly first mission, you missed out on an absolutely amazing and unprecedented driving experience.

Sliding behind the wheel of a slate of ’70s muscle cars as former race driver-turned-undercover cop Tanner, it was your job to lay rubber across four US cities – Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York – all in the name of high-speed justice. Each of these cities are fascinatingly distinct. Sun-drenched Miami features lengthy causeways and addictive bridge leaps, while San Francisco is packed with drastic elevation changes, trams, and the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. LA’s missions occur exclusively at night, amplifying the seediness (and again paying homage to The Driver, in which director Hill deliberately shot all the chase sequences for at night). New York is a dense maze of grids and tunnels, framed with high buildings.

The maps were incredible, but so too was the handling. Driver’s hulking American pony cars and land yachts weren’t exactly rapid or nimble by typical gaming standards for the time, but they were nonetheless outstandingly satisfying to throw into elbows-out powerslides and over huge jumps (where the era-accurate suspension would often see them bouncing a second time as the soggy springs absorbed their All-American bulk).

From its flying hubcaps to its fabulous funk soundtrack, Driver’s dedication to bringing the spirit of ’70s and ’80s car chases back to life on PlayStation was dazzling. Sentimentally speaking, it’s one of my favourite games of all time. Depending on what mood you catch me in, it may be my outright favourite, ever.

For clarity, Reflections didn’t quite break through alone. Angel Studios’ Midtown Madness did, after all, speed onto PCs in 1999 also (a few weeks before Driver hit PlayStation). An open world racer set in Chicago, Midtown Madness set the tone for taking traditional racing to the streets. Open worlds would become the studio’s area of expertise, and Angel Studios (now Rockstar San Diego) would later flex that strength in the likes of Midnight Club, Smuggler’s Run, and Red Dead Redemption.

Still, that Ubisoft has let the legacy of Driver languish since the release of 2011’s much-loved Driver: San Francisco is downright depressing. A groundbreaking achievement in every way, Driver deserves so much better.

Today, Driver is a relic. In 1999, however, Driver was truly ahead of its time. A pioneer. Contemporaneous audiences agreed. Or, at least, the ones that could pass the first mission did. It’s one of the top 30 best-selling games on PlayStation, ever. Wedged roughly somewhere between the acclaimed super sequel Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and monster hit Resident Evil 3, Driver was certainly no sales slouch.

In other words, it’s more than some curio in the history of open world driving games that some gamers may otherwise believe began with the likes of Grand Theft Auto III.

Perhaps you disagree. After all, all Reflections had to do was assemble four, enormous free-roaming city environments (the likes of which had never been built before), craft AI that could respond and effectively pursue players through them (which didn’t exist), compliment it with a class-leading vehicular damage system (that few racing developers of the era seemed capable of matching), and throw in a full replay editor for players to create custom car movies (on a console with 2MB of RAM).

Easy, right?

Well, in the words of Driver’s own tricky tutorial: show us what you can do.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.

Matsubara’s goal is ambitious, but the company does of course face extremely stiff competition. Depending on the definition, the world’s largest game publisher is currently Sony Interactive Entertainment, with the Top 10 also including Microsoft, Nintendo and Electronic Arts. The group also includes relative newcomers from China such as Tencent, NetEase and miHoYo.

“Setting such a lofty goal has helped me to identify the challenges that stand in our way,” he says. “What SNK currently lacks the most is development capabilities, so strengthening development capabilities will be essential. Beyond that, we can also consider acquiring other studios with strong IP, to add to our portfolio.”

SNK’s next announced game is Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, the first new entry in the Fatal Fury series in 26 years. After nearly three decades away, the new game is attracting a positive response from fans of fighting games – but Matsubara acknowledges this alone will not be enough.

“It will be necessary for us to develop titles in various genres and release multiple titles every year,” he says. “We are also working on genres other than fighting games. We are planning not only action games that utilize SNK’s legacy IP, but also action games that are brand new, and we hope to start releasing these over the next few years.”

Matsubara joined SNK in July 2021. In the three years since, he has made significant changes, strengthening the company’s development, sales and publishing divisions. Headquartered in Osaka, the company also opened new development studios in Tokyo and, most recently, Singapore, with another studio already open in Beijing. Last year, its Osaka HQ changed location as well, leaving its longtime home for a larger, more centrally located office close to Shin-Osaka bullet train station. In terms of marketing and sales, Matsubara has increased the company’s focus from Asia to include more proactive efforts in the West.

As a geographically central location in Southeast Asia with a high level of English proficiency, stable economy and growing pool of tech talent, Singapore is becoming one of Southeast Asia’s most prominent locations for game development. In recent years, companies such as Ubisoft, Electronic arts and Bandai Namco have opened offices there, while locally developed indie games such as Cuisineer and Let’s Build a Zoo are taking Singapore’s soft-power culture to the world. Gaming peripheral makers such as Razer and Secretlab, too, have built a strong reputation for the country, while gamescom spinoff event gamescom asia has been held there for several years.

As we spoke with Matsubara shortly after the opening of SNK’s new Singapore studio, we asked the reasons behind this choice of location.

“When I joined SNK, we only had studios in Osaka and Beijing,” he says. “We soon set up a Tokyo studio, but we felt we needed to increase the number of studios and work on strengthening our development capabilities. When we look to Asia, Singapore is the most attractive place. Engineers there are knowledgeable about generative AI and machine learning, which have been attracting attention in recent years, and they are interested in joining the videogame industry. So Singapore felt ideally suited for game development.”

Each of these studios undertake different tasks while also collaborating on certain projects. While the Singapore studio finds its feet, it has been twinned with the Tokyo studio, while also taking advantage of local knowhow to contribute development research to the group as a whole.

“For now, the Singapore studio and the Tokyo studio work together closely, holding regular meetings and collaborating on title development. In the future, I would like the Singapore studio to become a standalone studio, and to develop AAA titles as a hub studio for Southeast Asia.”

Matsubara also explained that the Singapore studio has a strong R&D focus, particularly in the fields of generative AI and machine learning, which will feed back into the rest of the SNK group.

SNK also has sales bases in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. But even with all of these new development and sales offices, the company’s plans for expansion continue to unfold. As SNK works towards its goals, it plans to eventually either open outposts in North America and Europe, or to build partnerships in those regions with other companies.

While SNK has a very long way to go to realize its aspirations of cracking the global Top 10 publishers, it is clearly no longer just a Japanese company. By embracing a multicultural approach and dabbling in new genres, there’s a good chance it will release some cool games. That in itself will be an important first step in once again making SNK a household name.

Daniel Robson is Chief Editor at IGN Japan and is on Twitter here.

Though Madness Returns the game has been out for years, the most popular way for fans to publicly join together is by looking at the tiniest game details through a magnifying glass. On TikTok, a scene shows Alice hallucinates having her skull drilled open at the corrupt Rutledge Asylum. The camera lingers on swollen leeches in jars. Alice looks dazed in slow-motion, with makeup staining her skin like a bruise, and moved viewers supply the video with 43,000 likes.

“SAVE ALICE ASYLUM PETITION,” says the most popular comment.

Madness Returns YouTube videos likewise prioritize analysis of the game’s visuals and story. One 51-minute video by video essayist Boulder Punch spends almost half of its runtime on series “highlights,” praising its surreal platforming and aching orchestral score.

YouTuber BlackRose was among those captivated by its “beautiful, grungy artwork” when she recorded her first YouTube episode with it in 2023, leading her to recommend it to her 111,000 followers.

“I was immediately hooked,” she tells IGN. “One particular part of the game that sticks with me vividly was when Alice became a giant after eating [enchanted Eat Me cake in] Queensland. I had loads of fun becoming big and terrorizing all the enemy card guards while I laughed maniacally for having so much power.”

Master of the macabre

“The art direction of the two Alice games are definitely what struck me the most [about them] — that dark, gothic style that blends objects of childhood with violence and the macabre,” says Maria, who runs the horror gaming YouTube channel eurothug4000.

McGee’s defunct Shanghai-based games studio, Spicy Horse, specialized in the unique style that gave Alice life. Aside from the Alice series, the developer also (somewhat unpopularly) turned several Brothers Grimm stories into platformers, while padding them with intriguing, cartoonish gore. But American McGee’s: Alice is what truly established Spicy Horse as a purveyor of cute brooding. Madness Returns’ art director Ken Wong was certainly inspired by it.

After Wong created Alice fanart in 2000, McGee took notice, and the two worked on designs together for several years. And on Madness Returns, “we saw an opportunity with the visuals to create something that was violent and horrific, yet also beautiful and full of imagination,” Wong says. “Wonderland is such an amazing setting.”

“I’m biased as the art director,” Wong continues. “But in 2024, I think it’s worth playing Madness Returns to experience a real visual feast. We were pushed to unleash our imaginations and explore some really dark places, and I think the game we created has some of the most beautiful environments and some of the most f’ed up characters I’ve ever seen in a game.”

@leah___lbbh But recovering the truth is worth the suffering. #SeeHerGreatness #alicemadnessreturns #alice #madnessreturns #fyp #SeeHerGreatness #fyp #fyp #fyp ♬ Alice Madness Returns – °•💘💌 𝒜𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓎𝒶𝒽 💌💘•°

Though the content of its story suggests defiance of its lineage, Madness Returns nonetheless shares its core with Alice in Wonderland, the idea that being a girl in an adult environment feels surreal. Because of this, actress Susie Brann, who voiced Alice in both games, tells IGN over email that she “wanted to bring to life the Alice [she’d] read about as a child.”

“I saw her as frank, polite, well brought up, curious, honest and adventurous,” says Brann. “I was aware that there was a great disparity between the innocence and truthfulness of Alice and the horror that was going on around her. But being aware that she had experienced real horror in the loss of her parents in such a horrific way, the games could be seen as an outworking of what was going on in her mind. Maybe bringing some form of closure, if not healing, to her mind.”

The original Alice in Wonderland provides a roadmap to children hoping to detangle the bizarre world of grown-ups. Madness Returns has, in turn, become a cornerstone guide for women who’ve learned to become distrustful of the white rabbit that led them to it. Fans online gush about the way Madness Returns handles trauma, which is, to this day, uncommonly nonjudgmental and empowering.While the villainous Bumby forces Madness Returns’ Alice to suffer from gendered grief, she never allows it to infect all of who she is. She’s more of a goth role model than a tragic hero, and in fans’ appreciation of her, she’s been able to join Alice in Wonderland as a fairytale classic.

Some fans have even grown up with Madness Returns the way other children, for more than a century, have had Alice in Wonderland read to them at bedtime. That was the case for twenty-two-year-old Johnnie, whose mom had been playing Alice games since before they were born. They first played it themselves when they were only five years old.

These days, Johnnie appreciates how “[Alice] isn’t sexualized, demonized, or saved by a man,” they say. “All of her healing is done on her own, and I’ve always loved and appreciated that. […] Alice as a series, I believe, sparked a lot of discussion around trauma, psychosis, and mental health and provided that safe space for those who have suffered too without being painted as a villain.”

Twenty-three-year-old Brynlee Daigle agrees. She’s loved Madness Returns since begging her mom to buy it in 2012. Now, she discusses it with friends on Discord and does Alice roleplay on Tumblr. “One aspect of the game that still sticks with me is the important message about mental health, that no matter if you’re disabled, or severely traumatized, you can overcome any obstacle in your way.”

“It’s why I have the [American McGee’s Alice] Jabberwocky [boss] battle tattooed on my thigh,” she continues. “It’s there to remind me I can always defeat my inner demons.”

A community lives on without its original creator

Though he’s helped Madness Returns sprout a loyal and hopeful community, McGee himself might prefer to let Alice’s memory fade, like ink. In an email to IGN, a representative for McGee declined a request for comment, instead citing a recent YouTube video as McGee’s “final word on the matter” (after that, McGee acknowledged the “intensity of Alice fans” in relation to this article on Twitter). In the video, McGee describes being “emotionally, quite destroyed” after EA rejected his community-backed proposal for a third game.

Though McGee once welcomed fans’ ardor while recruiting support for his Patreon, EA’s rejection has understandably cut down his patience for it. He currently treats fans’ eagerness like he would a slack-jawed Frankenstein – a creation that could never meet his wants and needs.

“Alice fans tend to have difficulty reading what I am saying when it comes to how much I DO NOT want to make games anymore,” he wrote on Twitter on April 24.

Fans have learned to cope with his cold shoulder. Most of the meaning they derive from Madness Returns is personal anyway.

“Many of the active fans I’ve seen online are women,” says Maria, “and American McGee’s Alice goes through a lot as a young woman growing up in a world working against her.”

“I think every woman can relate to some aspect of [Alice] in a way,” she continues, “that feeling of something taken from them, that feeling of not seeming like you’re in control […] because you are a woman.” So fans are grateful for what already exists. “If there’s one thing I want people to take away from playing [Madness Returns],” says Jessilyn, “is that working through trauma — no matter how hard or stupid it is — can be worth it.”

“If something is true, it’s true for all time,” Brann says. “If the game resonates with people and helps them work through and leave behind some of their turmoil, understanding themselves more and what they’ve been through, that’s got to be a good thing.”

Ashley Bardhan is a freelance writer at IGN