Reviews from

in the past


It’s a kind of terrible Outrun ripoff but nostalgia makes it impossible to hate it.

Achei um jogo bastante charmoso, apesar da sensibilidade absurda no analógico e da trilha que deixa a desejar.

First GOTW finished for 2024. Great visuals for the time, and the music rules. It's also nice not having the computer car immediately behind rubber-band you the entire race. However, constantly throwing obstacles at you in tight windows (looking at you, Chicago) ultimately leaves it feeling more like a game of reflexes and less like a game of skill. Still, this one is fun and campy enough that it grows on you anyway.

More like cruis'n California, amirite!?

CRUISSSSIINNNNNNN YEEEAAHHHAAHAA


The fun loving attitude still shines through even if nowadays it's hard to appreciate how impressive its visuals were when it released

Cruis'n USA is one of my all time favorite racing games despite some obvious glaring issues and shortcomings that the Nintendo 64 version had versus the original arcade game, in addition to other shortcomings that are just naturally part of the game itself regardless of platform.

What I always enjoyed about Cruis'n USA (and the Cruis'n series in general) is that it doesn't take itself seriously and goes all-in in the concept of being an arcade game with unrealistic features (i.e. being able to drive a school bus and being able to keep up pace and compete with exotic sport cars like Ferraris).

I also thought that the premise of the game was always fun and interesting: you literally have to cruise across the USA through different states starting in the west coast and ending the process on the east coast. Levels feature landmarks that pertain to their location. Graphics are nowhere near as good as the arcade version and in a way are somewhat disappointing but this is after all an early life cycle Nintendo 64 port game. Soundtrack was good and I enjoyed being able to switch tracks while driving.

The high score for this review stems more from a personal experience of what the game meant for me at the time and just how much fun I had with the concept and premise all while exploring the new Nintendo 64 hardware which was able to bring us these types of arcade ports that, while far from perfect, delivered a good experience for console users at home.


The least fun of the 4 racing games I had on the n64. Only thing that stood out to me at the time were the women at the beginning and end. I recall not liking it cause of how bumpy it felt.

Super fun racing game.

good game, but i swear there was a point in the game where they tried passing off the same track for multiple locations. also why tf they make a game called "cruis'n USA" and make half of it set in California. like god dam, let me race in philly.

ok so keep in mind i played this at like 2am while sick from covid and wasnt of sound mind but this is GOTY whatever the year this came out. think i felt pure unadulterated happiness playing this. does it hit as hard now? no but there was a brief moment when i drove into 3 different cars and caused a massive pileup where i saw god and he said good job so. although looking at it now i never got any best times on any of the tracks so i really dont know what i was doing.

controles muito bons, as músicas então nem se fala.
só achei ser pequeno e não ter muita opção de customização, se tivesse isso seria perfeito.

It's boring but the soundtrack kicks ass, and the primitive physics is SOVL

It's... fine. I don't remember it too well.

I unironically really enjoy this game
ooo ahh oo ahh best song btw

Really has aged poorly. Nothing too awful about it, but it's just a mediocre racer now with some control and ai issues. Can still be plenty fun, but shows its flaws.

Particularmente, eu sempre vi esse jogo com bons olhos. Eu me lembro do hype que ele tinha no lançamento do n64. Considerando a capacidade do video game, eu considero um jogo competente e desafiador se você for rejogar em níveis de dificuldade maiores. Também há muitos carros para desbloquear e outras coisas interessantes que se pode fazer no game.

The first road-based racing game on the N64. I remember this being panned in magazines, but surely not much can go wrong with something as simple as a racing game, especially one that Nintendo themselves published?

Unfortunately, there is a lot to go wrong. Almost the entire game feels exactly the same: driving along the same four lane roads, dodging the same few cars and turning over the slight bends – hoping that your card doesn’t decide to swerve too much. The handling is dreadful and everything just feels floaty, even collisions. The only distraction are the different backgrounds (which you can see loading in), and this is not enough to stop the game from becoming stale before you’re half way through it – which is an impressive feat when the game is less than 30 minutes long.

There was one level that stood out: a redwood forest level. Most of this is two lanes, with the roadside visuals up close and some large trees to drive under. In most racing games, it wouldn’t be a good level, but in Cruis’n USA, it’s the best by a long way.

If you really want to, you can complete the game on harder difficulties in different cars to unlock faster versions, but the first playthrough is so dull that there’s really no reason to do so. I can see this being fine in the atmosphere of an arcade, spending a few quid on it, but for a home console release, this is just bare bones.

The Cruis’n series had a few games on N64 and there’s even a new game on the Switch, so hopefully this series improves as it goes on.

It relies too heavily on throwing hard to avoid obstacles at you, so in some moments, the dullest, it becomes a matter of reflexes instead of actual dexterity. It’s just too dumb and to unserious not to like despite everything. And it does look good!

Ninja Gaiden 1
Ninja Gaiden 2
Ninja Gaiden 3










CRUSINUSA!!!

It may seem pointless playing this trash at home rather than the full chair-and-wheel setup at the arcade, but I had a great time renting it in 1996.

Very basic racing game. Most closely similar to Outrun but that's a much more fun game. This one has some humor thrown in like the roadkill but it just feels a little off. I played the sit down 2 player model which I remember seeing everywhere as a kid. I know this game was popular enough to spawn a long running series but there are better options out there.

I had a ton of fun with this game despite is being overly simple back in the day haha.

I may or may not be slightly biased here with all of my love towards Namco and Sega arcade racers, but something about this game didn't quite stick with me in the same way games like Ridge Racer or Outrun do. Which is odd, because I hear that the Cruis'n series of games is indeed a rather well-regarded arcade racing series, and I do in fact have fond memories of playing some Cruis'n cabinets in my youth. Perhaps either the N64 port isn't particularly as good as the Arcade (which does happen to be the case a lot of the time when it comes to these things), or I just didn't get the gameplay, but this felt rather unpolished. The track difficulty varies immensely, with some courses having extremely narrow passageways with no room to turn properly (Can you even drift in this game? I tried everything, and the manual doesn't seem to have anything either in it...), and some courses that are super wide with multi-lane roads and very wide and forgiving turns, leading to a very unbalanced overall gameplay experience. Lastly, I think that the real fun of Cruis'n lies in the wild nature of the traffic. EVERY CAR IS A DRUNK DRIVER, and with that notion, random wacky pile-ups and overall general chaos tend to ensue, which is fun if you aren't in the lead and you watch another driver eat it hard, but definitely also can get you as well, ruining some particular racing attempts. It is a kind of novel way to rubber band things to keep everyone together without resorting to kart-racer mechanics like items, as the further you are ahead of the pack, the more likely you are to see an oncoming car slam into you at a billion miles per hour, and mechanics like those are indeed fun, if not slightly frustrating. All in all, I am kind of curious to see where the series goes next with cruis'n world and cruis'n exotica, but I am slightly disappointed that the first game doesn't particularly live up to its other arcade adversaries from the time.

5 year old me shaking my head and sighing whenever the very horny [House Special]( https://youtu.be/Z3FpCk9V7SM) song plays in case my mom walks by so she knows I also don't approve of it


I loved this game in the arcades, even though I would grow to love its sequel, Cruis'n World, even more. But as an arcade title, it was VERY fun. And just like Killer Instinct, I do remember being excited when they both would say "Coming, to the ULTRA 64!"

Of course, KI1 never did wind up making its way to N64 (it should have), instead being released as an OK SNES port. And while Cruis'n DID come to N64, it was disappointing on multiple levels. For one thing, even though the arcade game released in 1994, the N64 port wasn't even a launch DAY title. The 64 only launched with a whopping TWO games: Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64. Granted, Mario was all most people seemed to care about, as it was so groundbreaking. But still, for me, even though it didn't come out TOO far out from launch day, it was still absurd that it wasn't a launch title.

And worse, for whatever extra time they took to make it, this port really didn't show it. It isn't a BAD port, it's still basically Cruis'n USA, same gameplay, same tracks, etc. But it's just...subpar. The game should have been MUCH better, close to "arcade perfect". Instead, we get rough textures, worse car models, crappier sounds, LOTS of fog/pop-up. It just felt like a lesser experience, because it is.

It's still a worthy addition to the library. But it should have been great, instead of just being OK. Thankfully Eurocom came along and made World the port THIS should have been.