Cruis'n USA

1994 · Racing · Arcade

About Cruis'n USA

Cruis'n USA (1994) is Eugene Jarvis's cross-country arcade racer for Midway and Nintendo, promoted as the first "Ultra 64" game though it ran on unrelated hardware, a big arcade hit with a poorly received Nintendo 64 port.

Cruis'n USA in Depth

Players race along one-way courses loosely based on real places, avoiding oncoming traffic and roadworks, on a trip across the United States from San Francisco through California, Arizona, the Grand Canyon, Iowa, Chicago, Indiana and Appalachia to Washington, D.C., where finishing earns congratulations from President Bill Clinton. Each race must be won to move on, against a time limit extended at checkpoints, and the game ends when time runs out unless a continue is used. Players can switch the music with a dedicated button.

The cars are generic versions of real ones: a 1963 Corvette sold as the "1963 Muscle Car", a Ferrari 512 TR as the "Italia P69", a 1940 Ford as "La Bomba" and a Hyundai concept as the "Devastator IV", with an automatic or manual gearbox. Bonus vehicles include a police car, a school bus and a Jeep.

Making Cruis'n USA

In early 1994 Nintendo signed a deal with Midway's parent WMS Industries for two arcade games billed as the first Ultra 64 hardware, wanting a racer to compete with Sega's Daytona USA and Namco's Ridge Racer. Jarvis pitched the concept, and the game was shown at the June 1994 CES alongside Rare's Killer Instinct; Nintendo of America's Howard Lincoln later admitted it was programmed before Nintendo 64 development tools existed. In arcades it was a success: one of America's five best-selling arcade games of 1994 and the highest-grossing dedicated cabinet of 1995, earning comparisons with Daytona USA.

Leland Interactive Media had to downgrade the graphics for the 1996 Nintendo 64 port, which reviewers panned for its jerky frame rate, poor collision detection and music, averaging 50.63% on GameRankings; IGN predicted it would be "the nadir of N64 racing games for many years to come". Even so, with few games yet available for the new console, it sold over a million copies by the end of 1997. It began the Cruis'n series.

Cruis'n USA Trivia

Lead developer Eugene Jarvis had created Defender and Robotron: 2084.
The cabinet shown as Ultra 64 hardware at the 1994 CES actually ran on a modified JAMMA board; the game uses Midway's V-Unit.
Nintendo pulled the N64 version from the console's launch line-up less than a month before release for not meeting its standards.
The N64 version cut the ability to run over animals and a scene of Bill and Hillary Clinton in a hot tub; Jarvis said "It seems like they don't have a sense of humor."
It was the first third-party Nintendo 64 game on the Wii Virtual Console.