A playthrough of Nintendo's 1996 arcade racing game for the Nintendo 64, Cruisn' USA.
Played through the "Cruise the USA" mode on the default difficulty level. I used the Wii Virtual Console version in this recording.
It's really should've been called Cruis'n California (plus a few notably not-particularly-iconic pit stops before appearing in a soap-opera version of DC). Why is the St. Louis Arch in Iowa? And why the hell would anyone make an Iowa stage? I've laughed quite hard questioning that one many times, lame as it may sound.
Nintendo hyped the bejeezus out of Cruis'n USA, right alongside Killer Instinct, pretty early on. If I remember correctly, they were both introduced at consumer shows in 1994, and Nintendo's biggest point was how these titles were running on the same hardware as would be in the company's next home console, the Nintendo 64. Well, that didn't happen. They would've been killer system sellers if Nintendo could have followed through, but apparently they overreached a bit. Killer Instinct Gold was a pretty good game like KI2, but it wasn't KI2. And Cruis'n USA... wasn't pulled off quite as well.
It looked okay when it came out - it wasn't awful, but it certainly didn't impress anyone after it fell so far short of what was promised. It was pretty heavily censored - no more splattering the wildlife and such. But hey, looks aren't everything, and a poor port didn't kill Daytona USA on the Saturn, right?
Of course, if substance is your thing, your female passenger is worth her weight in gold. Her intelligent, insightful comments about your surroundings lend a great deal of perspective and insight to the experience. Whether she gasps, "Oh wow! Redwoods!" or helpfully offers, "Check it out. San Francisco," after you've already driven through a third of the city, it's clear that the developers wanted to develop her as a dynamic, independent woman of the 1990s. Any company that would go to such lengths to portray women as capable and intelligent as has been done here deserves a heartfelt applause. Clap clap That one was for you, Midway. Yeah.
Only Cruis'n USA's gameplay didn't fare so well either. The nuts and bolts of it are all the same and work just fine, but apparently Williams never figured out how to adapt steering wheel controls to an analogue pad. They're either so sensitive that you're drunkenly swerving all over the place, or if you lower the sensitivity, you can no longer turn sharply enough to make the harder turns. It's maddening, especially with how not-durable N64 sticks tend to be.
So, I suppose it sounds like I hate Cruis'n USA, since I've not really said anything good about it. Funnily enough, I don't. It's got some intangible quality to it that makes it fun, no matter how broken the controls are or how annoying the music is.
The Redwood Forest race being at the beginning of the game, though? Yeah, someone can go sit on it and spin for that one.
And why is the name spelled so awkwardly?! It's missing the final G, so why isn't there another apostrophe? Argh, I hate it when people break language rules for absolutely no discernable reason. Isn't English unreasonable enough to begin with? I teach it and it still leaves me scratching my head at times.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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