In the game, the player is Officer Tanner, a cop gone undercover due to his impressive driving skills, and must gain the confidence of the syndicate's bosses by performing increasingly difficult missions such as stopping or following another car, driving through windows, delivering a stolen car or a fan-favorite, scaring a taxi customer. The game is played in four cities—(Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City)—which, like many games, remain only partially faithful to the original city layouts.
The game was designed to look like '60s and '70s car chase movies. The music, the character design in the cut scenes, the cars (with flying hubcaps), everything is inspired from movies such as Bullitt and even TV shows such as Starsky and Hutch. The game also features a Director's Mode where the run could be replayed with cameras chosen by the player, and a Quick Replay, where the cameras were automatically selected.
In addition to the Undercover mode, the player also had an option to drive around in the cities (once they were unlocked) and dirt tracks. There were several other modes, like pursuit, escape, checkpoint, and carnage (inflicting as much damage as possible). After the game was finished (or secret passwords inserted in the records screens), several cheats were available. Among them are: skipping the garage mission, give (among others) the car super speed, immunity to police cars, invincibility, or a short ride on Newcastle, Reflections' home town. However some editions of the game do not show this.
Initially only for the PlayStation, PC and Mac ports were released. A special Game Boy Color version was released, with top-down view, only three cities—San Francisco was removed—and fewer missions.