This game was never designed to be played with a controller on your flat screen. But the dedication to that same conformity is also what makes Daytona USA such a hollow experience. The three tracks (Beginner, Intermediate and Expert) are all there and unchanged, along with the Automatic and Manual variants of your vehicle.īasically, it’s the closest thing to an arcade clone outside of having the entire three-seat set in your living room. Everything is perfect – from the announcer proclaiming that you need to start your engine, to the texture pop-in of the slick streaked track as it rolls out in front of you. The highlight of Daytona is easily the Arcade mode, which is probably one of the most arcade-perfect conversions I’ve had the pleasure to play. Sadly, none of these modes outside of the Arcade are worth playing – Karaoke simply removes the words of the game’s music and puts them on screen so you can sing along.

Boot up the download and moments later, you could be back in that TimeZone in 1995, blocky red and blue NASCARs rolling down the track to the epic theme song we all know and love.Īlong with the obligatory arcade mode, there’s online multiplayer, a completely strange Karaoke mode and “survival”, which is obviously trying to emulate the endlessly boring experience of real life NASCAR. SEGA, who in the past six years have remade and relaunched the large bulk of their golden years, have finally dropped their arcade perfect crowd pleaser onto the XBLA and PSN.

Who hasn’t, or hadn’t, walked past an arcade in the 90s, hearing that siren’s call of driving goodness calling out to them? The game that invented the cross-unit play is still sitting pretty in most of the dying amusement slots outside movie theatres and beer gardens, begging those with a bit of nostalgia (or inebriation) to sit down for just one more race.

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