Test Drive (2002)

Test Drive is a reboot of the series running on a completely reworked game engine and, for the first time in the series, story mode. This was the last game by Pitbull Syndicate before they were bought by Midway and became Midway Studios Newcastle.

Sub-Page#

Prototype Info Prerelease Info

Unused Cuda#

By either editing the save game or using codes, an unused version of the Plymouth Hemi Cuda can be unlocked in the garage. Featuring a Challenger T/A-inspired hood scoop instead of a shaker hood scoop, this version of the Cuda was originally intended for Clark. However, the developers decided to use the normal Cuda, leaving this model fully functional in the game:

Hamada's Supra can also be unlocked using the same method, but the game will crash if you add them in the garage.

Hidden Credits#

The header of the data .bin files for the PS2 version has the following credit (note the typo):

BigFileHeader for BigFile V1.1 (C) Steve Snake, March 2001. 
Hello everybody! What are you doing snooping around in my files? 
Now V1.2 By C Kirby!!! & (C) Pitbull Syndciate Ltd. 
Visit www.pitbull.co.uk 

The same message would later appear in L.A. Rush.

Also found in a .txt file in the game's files for the PS2 version is a leftover log file from an internal tool named pap2psx2 (Pitbull Art Pictures to PlayStation 2.v2.9 - Movie Support+), which was used for converting textures:

Snack V1.1 (Snake's Packer) (C) Steve Snake, 10th October 2000

Updated 15th November 2001 to remove silly compiler bug (Cheers Skippy!)

Internal Name#

The internal name of the game is TD2001, as well as TD2K1.

Hidden Detail#

The IP address displayed in Underground mode's "in-car unit", 213.120.252.194, was Pitbull Syndicate's mail and web server used for their site at the time.

Regional Differences#

As the game was released under a different name in Europe, the logos were changed:

US	Europe

Platform Differences#

• The PS2 version runs at a lower resolution than the Xbox versions (512x448 (US) and 512x512 (EU) for PS2 versus 640x480 for Xbox).
• Pixel shaders are also missing on PS2, as those features were made to take advantage of the Xbox's GPU capabilities.
• Music formats differ: the Xbox version stores each sound file as separate .wma tracks, while the PC version packs them into an .xdt archive.
• The Windows version has inferior graphics compared to the Xbox version, with many broken graphics effects as well as missing visual effects, such as lightning.