“Daytona USA has a fantastic amount of mechanical depth, that’s the main reason I love it as much as I do,” Best enthuses. Serious arcade players like David ‘Deca’ Best are still exploring the depth of the original’s famed handling model.
So much so that the 2011 PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game included a special karaoke mode.įor all Daytona USA’s playfulness, though, it is a game with great nuance. Players didn’t just listen, they joined in, an element that remains a vital part of the culture around the game. While contemporary game musicians like Tommy Tallarico and Hiroshi Okubo built works of atmosphere and tone, he instead crafted sunny, simple pop tracks with memorable vocals. Mitsuyoshi’s choice of the word song is important. So my idea for beating Namco from the view of sound composer was to add songs to the game, and record those songs by myself.” “I developed the sound of Virtua Racing, and I implemented vocal sounds for that game as a part of its sound effects. “During the development of Daytona, Namco released Ridge Racer and our mission was ‘beat them at all costs’,” explains Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, the eccentric composer for Daytona USA, who also sung his own lyrics for the game. This was a driving simulation that brought to the arcades a hugely overlooked element of actual driving: singing along to the radio. While critics at the time lauded the game’s visual fidelity and technological ambition, Daytona USA stood out to players because it had personality. Mention the game to anybody who loitered in arcades in the 1990s, and they are likely to share his enthusiasm. Starkey has a whole catalogue of Daytona USA memories to call on, and he’s not alone. I remember buying the Sega Saturn version in 1996 and feeling disappointed.
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I remember the eight-player deluxe version in Trocadero’s Funland with the TV cameras pointing at the race leader’s face. As a result, I can achieve first position on every course now. “I’d play off all the credits with friends after hours.
So on Sundays, Starkey found himself with a whole arcade to choose from, and a day’s worth of change that he absolutely had to put through one machine. “My boss would tell me to put all that change into an arcade machine on Sunday because I wasn’t in on Mondays, so he could open the cabinet and re-use it all.” “In 1995 I worked in an arcade that had no change machine, so I would carry pound coins in a bum-bag,” he says.
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He installed Daytona USA at his arcade (where game credits are free after visitors pay for entry) partly because he makes a living from popular cabinets, but partly because, for all the arcade games he’s worked with, Daytona USA has special meaning to him. Mark Starkey, the owner of Heart of Gaming, is a long-time employee in the arcade industry. It’s frenetic close-quarters stuff, with frequent hair-raising crashes and tyre-scorching escapes. You select from three circuits, start at the back of the pack, then zoom through up to 40 other vehicles, attempting to finish the race before the timer runs out. The set-up is familiar to anyone who’s ever popped a coin in an arcade machine with a steering wheel welded to the front. Still chugging along in arcades the length and breadth of the land. In a genre where innovation and individuality are arguably stifled by game design conventions, Daytona USA stands out as truly special, even amid Sega’s own crowded starting grid of genre-defining racers.
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The reason why this grunting, knockabout NASCAR sim still thrives, and the reason the third new cabinet-based game in the series is now gradually making it to arcades globally, is rather intangible. The game can still be found in public places all over the UK and beyond, while myriad ports have made their way to everything from Dreamcast to PlayStation 3. And not just in this specialist coin-op den. Released in 1993, and available in a variety of cabinets from basic standing model to full-on deluxe recreation of the player’s 41 Hornet car, Sega’s masterpiece always pulls a crowd. Featuring chunkily texture-mapped stock cars, snaking between each other on swooping circuits below an azure blue sky, Daytona USA, is one of the greatest driving games ever made. If you were to set foot inside the Heart of Gaming, a densely packed treasure trove of classic and modern arcade games in Croydon, there is one cabinet you’d almost certainly have to queue to play on.
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