You need to realize that Atari's Hard Drivin' was an inspiration to a lot of 3D Driving games including Sega's Virtua Racing and Daytona USA. 3D Graphics were increasingly popular among a lot of arcade games at the time. This later inspired Midway to make these 2 great games: Hydro Thunder and Offroad Thunder. The only difference is that these 2 great games used more advanced physics engine and 3D graphics engine to make the game more fun and challenging.