Hard Drivin' is a 3D action game where you control a high-performance sports car. Your goal is to race around the course as fast as possible and hit as many checkpoints as you can. Hitting a checkpoint gives you extra time to go farther, but be careful - traffic on both sides of the road means you need to watch out when passing.
The game has two main sections: the speed track and the stunt track. The speed track is longer and allows for faster speeds, while the stunt track requires you to perform various stunts like jumping over bridges and driving through loops.
Crashing your car results in a brief replay of the crash from a cinematic angle, showing how badly it has hit something - whether it's a cement truck or a minivan. However, this just sets back your progress by a few seconds as you get back up to speed.
The Atari Lynx version of Hard Drivin' keeps most of the original 3D graphics but loses the force-feedback mechanism that was present in the arcade original.