Night Driver

The player controls a car which must be driven along a road at nighttime without crashing into the sides of the road as indicated by road side reflectors. The game is controlled with a single pedal for the accelerator, a wheel for steering and a four-selection lever for gear shifting. The coin-operated game had a choice of three difficulties (novice, pro and expert), which the player could select at game start. The turns were sharper and more frequent on the more difficult tracks. As play progresses, the road gets narrower and more winding.

The game length is 50, 75, 100, or 125 seconds based on an internal setting. After 300 points, a player is awarded bonus time equal to game time, but the score wraps around back to zero at 1000 points, so it is possible to reach 300 points more than once. Due to the additional points received for more difficult play, playing on the expert setting is actually the easiest to achieve extra time once a player has mastered the game.

The development of Night Driver was led by Dave Shepperd at Atari, who was given an assignment to develop a first-person driving video game. Shepperd said that he "was given a piece of paper with a picture of a game cabinet that had a small portion of the screen visible" which he recalls being possibly "a German game" but "never saw the game play" other than "that there were a few little white squares showing". Shepperd used that concept to develop Night Driver. That the car is driving at night provided an excuse for the minimal graphics, as most features (like the street and buildings) aren't visible in the dark. While he did not know the title of the German game at the time, it was later identified as the coin-op Nürburgring 1, a first-person driving video game released earlier in 1976.

Atari used some of the leftover arcade cabinets from Hi-way (1975), a top-down vertically scrolling racing game, for Night Driver.

In Japan, it was the tenth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1976.

In the United States, according to Play Meter magazine, Night Driver was the sixth highest-earning arcade video game of 1977. According to RePlay magazine, it was the seventh highest-earning arcade video game of 1977. Play Meter later listed it as the ninth highest-grossing arcade game of 1978, and the eleventh highest arcade video game of 1979.

Two other first-person racing games were released shortly afterwards: Midway's Midnight Racer in November 1976 (later branded as Datsun 280 ZZZAP in March 1977) and Micronetics' Night Racer in March 1977.

Bill Budge wrote a Night Driver clone for the Apple II using the same name as the original.