Game Discussion of the Week: Daytona USA

Great arcade racing on a home console.

The theme song makes me feel very happy.

Daytona, to my knowledge, is one of the first fully-3d racers (after virtua racing of course). This is big to me because I was never really a fan of how most psuedo 3d racers played, the jump into full 3d makes things a lot more enjoyable.

For such an early 3d game, Daytona has an incredible amount of scope and fidelity. Most of these tracks take place in sprawling environments with huge setpeices designed to catch your eye, and everything is fully textured. Even with all of this visual flair, Daytona still looks crisp and plays at a smooth framerate, as was the gold standard for arcade games of the time.

I get that Daytona was an early 3d racer, and an arcade game on top of that, but it really has a modest track selection. One of the tracks is just designed off the Daytona oval. It's a godsend for new players to help them adjust to how the game controls, but when it's 1/3 of the entire track selection it becomes hard to appreciate such a simple track once you become competent at the game.

Dan E. Kool Daytona 2 had an even better soundtrack. Tell me this isn't the best song ever composed for an arcade game.

Easily the most impressive 3D racing game of the era. The gameplay holds up so well that with just a little HiDef paint, Sega could rerelease it decades later and it's as good as ever. Games like these just don't show their age at all.

It was among my first batch of Saturn games and holy crap, talk about an awesome way to get into the 32-bit generation! I know everyone talks about how terrible the first Saturn port is (I have the later port, Championship Edition, and it really is much better graphics wise), but the graphical limitations really didn't bother me: it was all about the speed, arcade-style handling, colorful visuals, cheesy music and, most importantly, running against 40 opponents that were all there at the same time. There's a lot of intricacies that you learn with time, like the fact that your tires actually worn out the more you use the brakes, or how you can get a head start by carefully controlling the brakes and acceleration, or the extra cars, including a horse... Also, the three tracks are varied enough so they don't get boring on replays.

I really don't see how any other arcade racer of the time, including Ridge Racer, could get even close to compete with it. As far as I'm concerned, Daytona absolutely crushes its competition.