| Cruisin' USA |
In 1996 Nintendo released their last cartridge based home console, the N64, and with it, came an unexpected twist - probably the 2nd or third biggest cartridge game for it, was not a Mario title, but rather, a driving simulator. A genre that on the NES and SNES was slowly growing to get fairly good on consoles, but the N64 is when the console driving sim truly came of age.
Cruisin' USA put together all the best elements you could have for a driving Sim, an analog joystick, now put center on the N64's controller (about the second best thing to a steering wheel and gearshift arrangement), movable camera angles, options for 1st person or 3rd person perspectives, killer music, grat maneuverability adjustable in the controller settings, and some great tracks, and a fair selection of cars including a Ferrari Testerossa, a Jaguar XJ, a Humvee, and I think a Deuce Coup (32 Ford). It was also one of the earliest occasions where the only difference between the arcade release and the console release was the CONTROLS. N64 lives on to this day, usually in emulation, as a classic racing simulator that tends to be more toward the top end where Mario Kart and Forza sit, rather than downstream where Rad Racer and so on sit. It's one of the fair few games I like in my "Guitar Era" where I was m ostly playing guitar and not playing modern video games that much.The Game I Beat in One Day - My Experiences It was my 11th grade year in High SChool, and my bandmate Zach loaned me his N64 (or was it our bandmate Daniel's N64, I can't remembeR). Anyway, all he wanted to do was play WWE wrestling....but me, I wanted a good CAR RACING game. I grew up playing Pole Position in the Arcades, and I felt, maybe this was the exact platform that would provide a similar experience on a home console. Plus I did not have the $150 to buy an N64 new, or $50 to rub together for used - I was mostly gaming on $5-20 Atari 2600's and NESes at the time, and a 12 year old Tandy 1000 SX 8088 desktop computer. |
