Cruis'n USA

"This one has crashed and burned."

This game hit the arcades in the mid-90's, and hit the N64 two years after the coin-op release. Unfortunately, for people who were looking for really realistic racing, they definitely did not get it. It was only the out-of-control racing fanatics who received it with open hands. And trust me, this does not use the N64 to its full potential. It may have everything the arcade version has, but it's a rip-off which I don't think was given enough work by the developers.

Cruis'n USA is fuel-injected with fourteen tracks, ten of which are immediately available and the other four are only available when you ''Cruise the USA'' and drive all the tracks. Not a bad figure, with some nice little details in some of the tracks, but for the most part it's kind of ridiculous. One of the biggest problems in the game, I think, is that the circuits are either way too easy for your liking and you don't even have a problem getting ten seconds away from the pack, or just too darn hard to even hope for an 11th-place finish.

There are four cars available to you (for the most part they look like, respectively: a 60's Corvette, a taxi, some sort of Acura sports car, and a Ferrari), but as you win the Cruise the USA mode on various difficulties, you'll be able to upgrade your car to even higher top speeds with better acceleration and so on. They each have their own different capabilities and so on, but ultimately none of them are invincible.

In Cruis'n you've got plenty of obstacles to have to deal with as you tear through the roads of San Francisco, Iowa, Chicago, the Appalachians, and so on - regular motorists, cows (in extreme cases, redwood trees or telephone poles). The big problem? They all go down like cardboard cutouts instead of splattering all over your windshield. The only thing that even comes close to splattering all over the place are the bugs and bird droppings that you'll encounter in such states as Iowa.

The steering of Cruis'n is tight, and for the most part it's pretty easy to steer around the really sharp curves that you'll find in the Redwood Forest or in Chicago. However once you hit something it might get icky. Like I said above, some objects will fall down in front of you, just like cardboard cutouts. Others might be slightly more dynamic, such as the toll booth gates, which you might carry on your hood for a few yards before they drop. But for the most part it sucks. If you hit opposing traffic, you just spin around and go back in the right direction, or flip. Keep in mind that this is an arcade racer. And it seems like in a game like this, your speed will never go to 0. The wacky physics, however unrealistic they are, are the game's saving grace.

Time to mention graphics, and I'm definitely going to have a hard time mentioning these. The frame rate is good sometimes, but in other cases, it sucks. For instance, when you drive through the curving San Francisco streets, the frame rate will go down pretty low to what may seem like an unplayable level. In addition, I really don't think that the graphics themselves are as polished as the N64 is capable of producing. If the lack of smooth visuals doesn't bother you, well...guess I can't do anything there. But there are some losses in graphics. You really think lousy sprites of a celebrating group at the end with shirts off and all or a girl waving the flag to start the race is going to be impressive?

Music sucks. Sound sucks. Don't, under any circumstances, condone this game music. Maybe one or two of the tunes are good. But most of them suck. In addition, the sound effects that the game provides, well, they sound like absolutely no work was done on those as well. Basically the Cruis'n team probably rented ten minutes in an amateur studio and didn't take the time to actually make it GOOD.

As for the two-player mode that comes standard with the game, it has all the features of the regular one-player mode. You can still cruise the United States, just like the one-player mode. Should one of you finish in first place, both of you move on, making it a sort of ''co-op'' mode. However, the frame rate in two-player mode makes it almost impossible to enjoy the game. You'd be better off running a race in one-player mode and just alternating controllers. That's how bad the multiplayer mode is in this game.

Lasting appeal: Zero. You heard me, none. It'll take you five hours to beat the entire game from start to finish, and that figure probably applies to a player who doesn't know crap about racing games, too.

Why don't we just assume that while this game was being ported to the N64, the development team did absolutely NO work polishing this game?

Maybe it might be worth a rent. And even then, you'd better hope it's only for one night. Because it really isn't worth the time. It might be enjoyable for a little while, but it's just not worth the time to pull out in the long run unless you're playing it with a friend or someone.

Final score: 4.3

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/07/00, Updated 07/09/02