"Sir, you were going 200 in a 50!"

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 if you visit the arcade seldom like I do.

Game Play

It's fun, driving above the speed limit on country and city roads swerving from oncoming traffic (and occasionally actually hitting cars in that 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 quarters. 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 addicting. 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 (maybe this game or the Cruis'n series, and all its popularity) 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.

Audio/Video

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 (thus, fitting the description of a forest) and the other levels have the same uniqueness and match parts of the state they are in.

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.

Replay

This game is great fun and addicting for quite some time. However all the new racing games that came out have wiped this game out of existence. There is now 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

So to re-cap, the game was a good one and addicting at that, and great to play whenever you visit the arcade, it just died out due to newer versions and other competitors.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/00, Updated 12/18/00