CRUIS’N USA ARCADE, N64, 1994

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then Sega must have been blushing Ferrari Testarossa red when Cruis’n USA arrived in 1994. Borrowing the OutRun formula wholesale, Cruis’n

USA was a geographically dubious trans-continental dash across America. The race began in a San Francisco that featured at least one suspension bridge too many, ran through a Grand Canyon stage that included Mount Rushmore, even though they are literally a thousand miles apart, and ended with you screeching to a halt outside the White House lawn. At least, mercifully, that was located in Washington, DC, and not Washington State.

While the handling was twitchier than an over-caffeinated quiz show contestant, the ever-evolving scenery gave Cruis’n USA an authentic roadtrip vibe that hid a multitude of gameplay sins. The Redwood Forest course that carved its way directly through the giant sequoia trees themselves was a particular highlight, as was plunging into the urban sprawl of Chicago just past the mid-point of the route. Less inspiring were the plains of Indiana, which looked awfully similar to the plains of Iowa you passed two stages back.

The strangest thing though – stranger even than the apostrophe placement in the word Cruis’n – was your objective when you started the arcade version of the game. It wasn’t ‘win the race’, or ‘finish in the fastest time’, it was ‘jam with the president in the White House hot tub’. Sure enough, if you did manage to reach the end of the game you were treated to a ‘political cartoon’ sequence that showed then-POTUS Bill Clinton bathing in the back of a pickup truck on the roof of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What do you mean you don’t look to arcade racing games for your biting political satire?