Easily the most famous of the games in this little wave, Daytona USA is an extremely well-loved game. Nearly 20 years since its release and long after the effective death of the arcade in the Western world, Daytona USA is still a star attraction at places like Dave and Buster's. There's something special about it-- even among all the other Sega racing games-- that makes people (and not just gamers and Sega fanboys like me) love it. The whys of that are another article completely, but to put it briefly, Daytona is extremely friendly. It is simple, it's bright, it absolutely defies you not to smile.
The developer, Sega's legendary AM2, doesn't necessarily port their arcade games to consoles at all: up until now we've actually never had a perfect arcade port of Daytona. When AM2 does handle a port, though, they do a hell of a job. This release for Xbox and PS3 is a copy of Daytona USA you could, if it came in a box, put next to your Criterion Blu-Rays or display in a museum. Is it worth ten dollars? Is not art worth ten dollars?
It's the same arcade game from '93, though: there are only three tracks, one of which (the most popular by far) is just an oval with a single sharp curve, and there are only two cars. The difference between the cars? One's manual transmission, the other's automatic. It's not a feature list that's going to impress anybody in 2011. But this isn't a game about a feature list: it's a game that has its tiny little amount of content and gets it so right.
The port has a challenge mode that effectively takes you through every corner in the game, and in-game hints will whisper every little trick (did you know that Daytona USA even had slipstreaming? I sure didn't). The steady difficulty curve really shines through in this mode: that first course is braindead easy, but it eases you in. The second course makes you pay attention, and the final course tests you fully. It's just right.
The handling is just right, too: it's probably the key to this game's success. The physics in Daytona USA are flagrantly unreal: the weird magic of drifting, the ease with which you can spin out fully and keep driving at 100mph, the way you land cleanly (and keep moving!) after an end-over-end collision. The designers of Daytona USA made sure that losing was still fun. That's the reason people still play it.
It helps that the game is so damn positive. The scenery is beautiful and it doesn't really make a lot of sense: there's a slot machine hanging over one straightaway, and you can play it as you drive by. It's exuberant. It's a game that not only features blue skies, but a man singing "blue, blue skies I see". You can't even make brightly colored games anymore without some loser whining that the rainbow in the background will make him gay, you know?
On the hardcore end, there is of course the time trial mode and a brutal survival mode, where the game turns on simulated tire wear. The way you abuse your car in this game, a couple of laps will completely shave your tires and leave you unable to even drive in a straight line (hilariously, the game rewards you for drifting uncontrollably in these desperate moments). The only solution is to pit stop, which in turn takes a huge amount of time off the game clock. It's vicious: I haven't cleared a single course on survival mode (80 laps for the beginner course, 40 for the advanced one, and 20 for the expert course) and I doubt that I ever will.
And of course there's a karaoke mode. If you've ever heard the music in Daytona USA, you know why. The famous Takenobu Mitsuyoshi soundtrack is offered in two flavors: the more conventional arranged music from the Saturn port and the original arcade music, in which Mitsuyoshi's voice is choppily, endearingly sampled. He sounds like the first Vocaloid.
So let nobody tell you that this isn't worth ten dollars because it's short a bullet point or two. It's one of the masterpieces, presented lovingly. I paid more for dinner last night.
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