Cruis'n USA - Arcade Longplay [048]

Visit our site and support https://retro-gamer.net/ CRUIS'N USA RELEASE DATE : November 1994 OVERALL : 69% Cruis'n USA is an arcade racing game originally released in 1994. It was developed, published, and distributed by Midway Games. It is the first game in the Cruis'n series and features races set in locations across the United States. Cruis'n USA is branded as the first release of the Ultra 64 platform collaboration between Midway and Nintendo, predating the "Ultra 64" Killer Instinct arcade hardware which would become the Nintendo 64. The arcade version was critically and commercially successful, drawing favourable comparisons to Sega's Daytona USA. The Nintendo 64 version received poor reviews, but was also commercially successful. It was released on Wii's Virtual Console in Europe in March, 2008, making it the first third party developed Nintendo 64 game to be released on the service. Like in most racing games, players race down one-way courses consisting of streets vaguely based on real-life locations. Players chose between seven different cars, with either an automatic or manual transmission. The environments include Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco, to Washington DC. In each race, players must reach first place to advance to the next track, and there is a time limit to reach the goal, which can be extended by driving through checkpoints. If the player does not finish before the timer reaches zero, the game ends, unless there is a continue available. There is also an option to change the music by pressing the music button. REVIEW When Cruis'n USA hit the arcades there was never a time when it wasn't being played. You would have to wait for at least five minutes if you wanted to play the game. That doesn't hold true now days, but it's still a fun one to play. GAMEPLAY It's fun, driving above the speed limit on country and city roads swerving (and occasionally hitting) oncoming traffic and racing and banging your friends into other cars. Always trying to get that first place spot so you could play again without putting in more coins. There are only like four cars to choose from, but simply by pressing the view buttons you can find about eight more secret cars. A bunch of tracks ranging from easy to expert settings all with different roads and turns. And keeping in mind this is Cruis'n USA, all the tracks are in the states. And the option of any camera angle you want. Camera angles vary from the helicopter cam (high above the car), to another cam that is above the car but closer, a cam in which it looks like the camera is on the top of the car, and of course the cockpit camera which is inside the car itself. All in all, a fairly regular racing game, that was just somehow thoroughly addictive. I think this was due to the fact that this game came out somewhat before the ''racing flood''. I guess something sparked companies to start making as many racing games as possible and most racing games came up average or below average because of all the games being pumped out. As stated before, this one came out earlier, so people were not as ''desensitized'' to the whole racing genre, and in affect liked this game a lot. GRAPHICS This is one category that helped the game out. Nice graphics, for a racing game. Nice details on all the cars when they are spinning around in the showroom. Definitely put some time into the backgrounds. In redwood forest you can see trees for miles and the other levels have the same uniqueness and match parts of the state they are in. SOUND I love the sound in the game. There are different songs for each track that fit the track and mood of the track perfectly and if you really don't like that particular song or don't think it fits the mood you can just change to one of the others. There are some funny sound effects when you hit bugs on your windshield or hit cows. When you are feeling lucky and drive on the dangerous side, a woman (that I guess is in the passenger seat) will yell things like ''Lookout!'' or ''We're going to crash!''. And at the end of the races you see and hear all the people cheering at the finish line. PLAYABILITY This game is great fun and addictive for quite some time. However all the new racing games that came out have wiped this game out of existence. There is Cruis'n World, which came out with more tracks around the world and new cars, Cruis'n Exotica, another of the series that came out with far out race tracks like mars and alien cars. Not to mention games not in the series that came out like the Rush Series, etc. These all of course now have much better graphics and updated features, leaving the original lost somewhere in the sands of time. OVERALL To re-cap, the game was a good one and addictive at that, and great to play whenever you visit the arcade, it just died out due to newer versions and other competitors. BREAKDOWN: GRAPHICS: 80% MUSIC/SFX: 65% PLAYABLITY: 70% OVERALL: 69%