Drive

Anki Drive is the prequel of the famed Anki Overdrive. It served as the foundation and tuning ground for Anki's top designers. Anki Drive was an all new racing toy that debuted in late 2013. It was revolutionary in the sense that "slot cars" and "fixed track" racing was completely thrown out of the picture, and cars were not bound to a certain "driving line." Anki Drive also allowed for the sense of a video game in real life, and mixed in fun from many different aspects of life, including car tuning, gaming, and racing, all packed into one advanced system, topped off with wonderful design. [Drive released on October 23rd, 2013]

Game Design and Aspects

Anki Drive comes with a starter kit, but unlike overdrive the kit, it does not contain "track pieces," but rather, contained a "mat" that cars would drive on. You can upgrade your car as you play, and have access to weapons, just like in overdrive.

Gameplay

Anki Drive offers multiple game modes, including:

Race: A traditional 15-lap competition to finish first.
Battle: Players use virtual weapons to disable opponents while racing.
Time Trial: A solo mode to achieve the fastest lap times.

The A.I.-driven cars improve with player performance, adapting tactics and increasing difficulty. Players can customize cars with weapon upgrades. The app provides immersive audio, ensuring long-term engagement.

Cars

Anki Drive has a total of seven cars in their lineup. Boson, Kourai, Katal, Rho, Corax, Hadion, and Spektrix.

Here is the list of cars and the kits they belong to, including a brief description of each:

Boson and Kourai are included in a starter pack, and have good all-around capabilities.
Katal and Rho are expansion cars. They have an edge in agility and speed, and have good items, but fall slightly short in weaponry.
Corax and Hadion are expansion cars, and could not be more different. Corax is slow, and has the best weapons of any drive car. Hadion is extremely fast, but has poor defensiive armaments, and is quick to disable.
Spektrix, the last car, is the most mysterious and cunning of the bunch features scramblers, and an all new shiny exterior, and is the only single model shell car in drive.

Mats Created

Only 3 Anki Drive mats were created before it was replaced with Overdrive, Starter, Crossroads & Bottleneck.

Starter - The starter mat came with every Anki Drive starter kit, and is shaped like an oval with a small curve.
Crossroads - Crossroads is an expansion mat, and looks like an infinity symbol where tracks converge, allowing for more fun as cars may crash into each other during battle.
Bottleneck - Bottleneck is another expansion mat, and has a unique oval-adjacent shape, with the bottom right containing a bottleneck where only 1 or 2 cars can fit at once.

Box Change

Sometime after Anki Drives release, Anki realised the box was too simple, causing people to not understand what it was and decide not to buy it. As a compromise, Anki started putting stickers on the front and back of all boxes to give much more information of what Anki Drive actually was.

Search for the iPA

Currently the .iPA file of Anki Drive is lost media, if you have an old Apple phone/tablet with the Anki Drive app installed, and are willing to jailbreak it in order to decrypt the app into an iPA file, please message @T0ast1t0 on Discord, or u/toast-my-ito on Reddit.

Hardware

Microcontroller (SoC): STM32F051K8 (ARM Cortex-M0, 48 MHz) handles core control and sensor integration.

Optical Sensor: OmniVision OV7739 grayscale camera module for track-line detection and car positioning.

Drive Motors: Brushed DC motors; optimized gearing for torque at low speeds.

Communication: Bluetooth 4.0; ~18ms per packet delay with the original Overdrive and Drive app, ~2-4ms per packet delay with Overdrive 4.0.