YMMV / Daytona USA

This is your crew chief! Your mileage may vary with these tropes, so good luck!

• Annoying Video Game Helper: The crew chief's advice and guidance can come across as annoying at times. He'll often chastise you for "slipping and sliding" while drifting despite that being exactly what you want to do. This is especially prominent in Daytona USA 2, where he interjects far more frequently and has a much, much wider array of voicelines.
• Best Level Ever:
  • SEGA Super GT manages to turn an Easier Than Easy course into one: The Super Beginner course takes place inside a house and your opponents are all various toys. And there's a bowling minigame on the back straight.
  • The Beginner course in Battle on the Edge is set inside an environmental dome, which makes it quite memorable.
• Broken Base:
  • The instrumental soundtrack for Championship Circuit Edition. Although critics and some players were pleased with the soundtrack because it lacked Takenobu Mitsuyoshi's singing, many fans of the original game's soundtrack weren't pleased that they removed his vocals, considering them a vital part of the game's fun. On the other hand, there are also fans of his who enjoyed the new remixes just fine.
  • Which edition of Daytona USA 2 is better: Battle on the Edge or Power Edition? Battle has a Scenery Porn Beginner course rather than the generic speedway course of Power Edition, while Power Edition has some bells and whistles that some feel offset the generic Beginner course such as the Hornet and the Challenge course (the latter of which may have necessitated the aforementioned change on account of its setup, as an open-air oval racetrack would presumably be much easier to transition into compared to an indoor and completely enclosed biodome).
  • Relatedly, which version of 2 has the better version of the Hornet Classic? In Battle on Edge, the Hornet is a secret vehicle accessible via code (which caused its presence in the game to go unnoticed for over two decades) with customizable stats and the same Model 2 graphics seen in the original, but otherwise handles exactly the same as the other cars in 2. In Power Edition, the Hornet is instead selectable from the start, and while it lost the customization aspects and had its design tweaked to match the Model 3 graphics used elsewhere in-game, its performance was altered to be identical to its counterpart in the original Daytona USA, meaning it's the only car able to powerslide with a 4-1-4 gear shift (something that is otherwise absent in the sequel due to different car physics).
• Cargo Ship: Certain lines in the lyrics to "Sling Shot" in 2 can be interpreted as a man's rather intimate relationship with his car.
  Feel the heartbeat of my machine / through this tight seat / I feel every motion / of this machine
  The race starts when two of us / become one
  Hear the heavenly melody / my machine sings / I sense every rotation / of all four wheels
• Common Knowledge: That the Saturn port was slammed upon release and quickly deemed an absolute trainwreck. In truth, the Saturn port was very well received upon release, garnering 8’s and 9’s from most of the press. This video goes into further detail about this historical misconception.
• Contested Sequel:
  • 2001 is considered one of the better ports of the original game or one of the worst. Those who enjoy it will claim it has the largest track selection in the series, including the Circuit Edition tracks, improved graphics, different cars and several racing options. Detractors tend to bring up the control sensitivity issue that plagued every review and odd car designs with large distracting tires, among other changes. Many in both camps were also disappointed that the game wasn't a port of Daytona USA 2 instead.
  • Daytona Championship USA. Although many longtime fans weren't happy that the so-called "long-awaited sequel" turned out to be another remake of the original game, with the three new courses being variants of the existing ones, there were others glad to see the game updated for modern arcades, especially considering the deteriorating state of the original machines, and appreciated the fact that the game is functionally identical in just about every way to the original.
• Cult Classic:
  • Daytona USA 2 was nowhere near as successful as its predecessor, but those who did play it often hold it in high regard. When it was announced that the game would be included in Like a Dragon Gaiden, it was not uncommon to see people expressing interest in getting it solely to finally play USA 2 at home.
  • Scud Race was also nowhere near as successful or popular as Daytona, but it's also held in high regard. For several years, there's been a strong demand for it to be re-released on modern platforms. But unfortunately due to legal issues surrounding the game, it likely won't ever get a re-release.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • The Daytona USA vs. Ridge Racer feud was one of the most memorable ones of The '90s.
  • Daytona USA also had a bitter rivalry with Shutokou Battle due to have releases on Sega consoles. However, it was toned down slightly when 2001 was outsourced to Genki, who developed the Shutokou Battle series.
  • During the Nintendo vs. Sega rivalry in the 90s, there was naturally some beef between Daytona and Cruis'n.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The player car in the original was referred to by fans as the "Hornet", in reference to the logo on the rear bumper and hood. This was eventually canonized by Sega in both versions of Daytona USA 2.^* As the Hornet Classic was a well-kept secret in Battle on the Edge for more than 20 years, most players wouldn't learn this fact until the release of Power Edition later that same year (1998).
  • Daytona Championship USA is usually just called Daytona USA 3 (partly due to the fact the game was originally promoted as "Daytona 3 Championship USA" before the "3" was removed from the title).
• First Installment Wins: Very few people play or remember Daytona USA 2 or SCUD Race. While USA 2 finally did see a re-release (of sorts) in 2023, SCUD Race still has the misfortune of having a total lack of consumer ports (and is unlikely to ever be ported due to the potential licensing costs involved). On top of that, the first game has also been ported and seen Updated Re-releases numerous times, including not one arcade HD remake, but two.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Sonic the Hedgehog. Being Sega series that have referenced one another at multiple points makes this something of a no-brainer, but special note goes to NASCAR Arcade, one of Daytona's many offshoots which featured the music stylings of Crush 40, giving the game a sound that'd be right at home with the Dreamcast-and-beyond era of the Sonic series. Because of this, it was fairly popular during the early 2000s for AMV makers to mash up Sonic clips with music from NASCAR Arcade (and Crush 40's Thrill of the Feel album by extension).
  • With F-Zero, due to that game being one of the main inspirations for Daytona. Sega also lent a hand with the development of F-Zero GX (including producer Toshihiro Nagoshi, who previously worked as the director of the original Daytona USA and the producer of 2), which helped bridge the two together. This kinship would be further strengthened when Super Smash Bros. Ultimate unexpectedly featured an entire "F-Zero Medley" by none other than Takenobu Mitsuyoshi himself.
• Gameplay Derailment: The original Daytona USA let you powerslide through corners through strategic gear-shifting. Daytona USA 2 suggests that this wasn't the intended purpose of the shifter, as attempting the same technique on it will result in a spinout or explosion instead, although Power Edition allows you to do it again in the Hornet car due to a Grandfather Clause.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Invoked. With Virtua Racing being a bigger hit in Japan and Europe than North America due to the States' preference for stock car racing over Formula 1, Sega AM2 made a stock car racer with the Daytona license to attract Americans. It worked.
  • Like [["Time Crisis"]], Daytona USA is also not foreign to Indonesian arcadegoers. Back in the 90s (and 2000s), you could find at least one cab of it in arcade centres in the country. One local arcade even held a Daytona USA contest back in the 90s.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The music for NASCAR Arcade was performed by none other than Crush 40, better known for their many contributions to the Sonic the Hedgehog series starting with Sonic Adventure, with NASCAR Arcade — released before Sonic Adventure 2 — marking the first official formation of the band. After a long period of "inactivity" following Sonic and the Black Knight, Crush 40 would have a triumphant return to the series by providing the main theme for Team Sonic Racing, essentially bringing everything full circle.
  YouTube comment by TheEFoy11: So Crush 40 went from making songs about fast cars, to Sonic songs, then did their own thing for a little while, until going full circle and making a song about Sonic driving fast cars. This is really satisfying to listen to with that in mind.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The above Daytona USA/Ridge Racer rivalry from the 90s became this with the PlayStation Vita Ridge Racer installment, where the Hornet would join the races (accompanied by Mitsuyoshi's vocals, even!) as part of a Sega/Namco crossover collaboration.
  • Crosses over with Real Life: Scud Race was renamed Sega Super GT for US cabinets. Years later, Sega published Sega Touring Car Championship and later Sega GT, another two driving games with licensed cars (JGTC and DTM cars for former). And years later in Japan, the Japanese Grand Touring Championships (JGTC) was renamed Super GT, making the US renaming of Scud Race even more hilarious.
  • Seeing complex road circuits in featured in this game can be amusing since at the time, NASCAR didn't feature these very often. However, in The New '10s, NASCAR started adding more road races to the lineup that weren't far off from what the game features, such as returning to Elkhart Lake: Road America, and utilizing the complete course at Sonoma Raceway. The real-life Daytona Road Course is roughly similar in concept to the intermediate circuit in the first game (Dinosaur Canyon).
  • One of the cars in 2001, Lightning, eerily resembles an A80 Toyota Supra. In 2019, Toyota put the DB-series Supra into NASCAR for real, even before the production model closed the 18-year Sequel Gap of the nameplate.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Daytona Championship USA, which turned out to be another updated version of the original game when it wasn't initially marketed as such. Considering that the game had already been remastered in HD for arcades (Sega Racing Classic), it's no wonder why fans were disappointed.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Daytona USA 2 being included in Like a Dragon Gaiden was a major selling point for some people.
  • Crossing over with Retroactive Recognition, a good deal of the attention given to NASCAR Arcade comes from the fact that its stellar soundtrack is the only involvement the (then up-and-coming) Crush 40 has ever had in a video game series other than Sonic.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • "And they're underway!"
  • "Time Extension!"
    • Bonus points go to the sequel, wherein the announcer starts off monotone but slowly gets more and more into the race with each successive lap on the Beginner and Advanced courses. By the time of the final lap^* or Lap 7 on the Beginner course, he's excitedly belting out "Time Extension!" (and sounds indistinguishable from the crew chief as a result).
  • "You're running 1st."
  • "The white flag is out! This is the final lap!"
    • Courtesy of the crew chief in 2 (and easier to miss mid-race): "You're in the final stretch!"
  • "A NEW WINNER!" Followed soon after by "WELCOME TO VICTORY LANE!"
  • "Now enter your name with the other champions."
• Narm Charm: Sure, the music is filled with Engrish lyrics, but it's still very catchy.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Quite possibly one of the most iconic examples for arcade games. There are even eight arcade cabinets in the Daytona 500 Experience museum. SCUD Race takes it a step further by using the licenses of famous supercars. Championship USA was even awarded the IAAPA Brass Ring Award in 2017 for Best New Product in the Arcade & Video Games Category.
• Older Than They Think: Daytona USA was one of the first racing games to implement realistic driving physics, which made the game more difficult compared to other racing games at that time. The drifting mechanic was also somewhat realistic for the time, giving players who didn't know how to powerslide a hard time. This physics technology was later used in many racing simulators like Gran Turismo.
• Polished Port:
  • The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ports of the original are easily the most arcade-perfect while further building on its foundation. Not only do they feature perfect recreations of the the original gameplay experience and soundtrack as well as the original graphics with HD textures and HUD elements retaining the original art style, but they also added various enhancements like widescreen, a mission mode, an optional arranged soundtrack, a karaoke mode (carried over from the original Saturn port), support for force feedback steering wheels allowing for arcade-perfect controls, and online multiplayer!
  • The Japanese version of Circuit Edition. The physics were reportedly altered to be closer to the original game, draw distance was improved, and it introduced the "Daytona USA Medley" as a bonus song sung by Mitsuyoshi.
  • 2001. Aside from some minor control issues, the graphics and draw distance were tremendously improved, up to 40 opponents can be raced on all courses with no slowdown, and eight courses were included with four variants each (normal, reverse, mirror, and mirror reverse), making it the biggest game in the series.
• Porting Disaster: The Sega Saturn port captured the fun and music from the arcade game, but not the graphics or the silky smooth 60 FPS framerate, instead being capped at around 20 FPS. Hardly a "disaster" but it wasn't ideal either. The PC version, meanwhile, was an improvement over the Saturn version in terms of graphics but still retained the 20 FPS framerate cap. The developers sought out to fix this with the Championship Circuit Edition released later.
• The Scrappy: The crew chiefs from each game, as explained in Annoying Video Game Helper above.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • One of the biggest downgrades of Daytona Championship USA was changing the series-traditional 4-position shifter and replacing it with a simplified up/down shifter. Given that many powersliding techniques rely on shifting down two or three gears at once, this is basically a screw-you to well-versed Daytona USA players. Although some machines do have a 4-way gear shift, not all of them do.
  • In the same game, the Live Camera system, which can be very distracting for advanced players due to covering parts of the screen.
  • The removal of 4-1-4 downshifting in USA 2, which heavily nerfed drifting and led to...
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Daytona USA 2 revamped the game's physics engine to make the A.I. opponents and driving physics more unforgiving and aggressive, and the tracks are somewhat longer in Battle of the Edge than in the previous games. Power Edition ramps up the difficulty even more and throws in the Challenge track which gives even experienced racers a tough run to beat.
• Signature Song:
  • "Let's Go Away", which is played in the opening demo of the first game and in the Advanced/Dinosaur Canyon course. It's also Mitsuyoshi's favorite.
  • "Sling Shot", used for the Beginner course in USA 2, is often regarded as the signature song from the second game.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Though the two diverge after a time, the second game's opening theme, "Battle on the Edge," appears to take some cues from Deep Purple's "Highway Star."
• That One Level: The first game's Expert level is tough. Ditto for the sequel's Expert level.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Although the graphics for Champion Circuit Edition were considered an improvement over the original Saturn port, fans weren't pleased that the racing arcade physics had been completely altered due to the game being developed by the Sega Rally port team and not AM2. Fans of Mitsuyoshi were also a bit bummed that his vocals were nowhere to be heard in the game. Both of these were addressed in the Japanese version.
  • For the second game, while Power Edition is typically hailed as the better game overall, many fans preferred Battle on the Edge's Beginner track, Astro Waterfall Speedway, for its scenic atmosphere as opposed to the update's more generic-looking SEGA International Speedway. (The track layout is identical; only the accompanying scenery was changed.) The music was left intact, so it wasn't a total loss.
  • Daytona Championship USA was subject to this as well. The new visual style attempted to combine realistic lighting and shadows with a bright and colorful arcade palette, but both styles tend to clash with one another. The HUD interface was altered, removing the radar and adding unwelcome live player cameras. Even the slot machine in Three-Seven Speedway, which players could use to add more time in the original, was removed. The 4-way gear shift had initially been replaced with an up/down shifter, removing a core element of the game, along with reports that the deadzone ^Explanation the portion on the steering wheel that doesn't recognize input and is treated as being idle had been altered and widened, altering the overall control scheme of the whole game. It's no wonder longtime fans of the original weren't happy.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The original Daytona USA was quite breathtaking for its time due to pumping out relatively well-textured and high-poly visuals at 60 frames per second. Five years later, Daytona USA 2 would completely top the original thanks to the power of the Model 3 board. The Astro Waterfall Speedway in particular is often remembered for how awesome it looked.

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