The Cruis'n Series
INSPIRED BY THE JOY OF PLAYING OUT RUN, EUGENE JARVIS CREATED ONE OF THE FIRST SHADED VECTOR RACERS WITH CRUIS’N USA. EUGENE EXPLAINS HOW HIS ARCADE HIT INSPIRED A SERIES THAT TOOK THE CONCEPT OF FUN DRIVING TO OUTRAGEOUS NEW LEVELS Words By Rory Milne
Sega’s arcade racer Out Run redefined the genre with its impossibly colourful depiction of speeding along the open road and the unbridled joy it gave players. Yu Suzuki’s hit employed 2D sprite scaling to achieve its 3D effect, but a few years later, 3D shaded vector graphics became possible, and designer Eugene Jarvis saw an opportunity to build on the coin-op’s basic concept while adding cutting-edge visuals. “Out Run was a big deal, so I wanted to capture some of that,” Eugene remembers. “The cool thing was the spirit of just having fun and going out for a drive. It wasn’t like a hardcore race. So my idea was to have a really good 3D simulation that was responsive to the driver, and by using 3D texture mapping we could have realistic digitised backgrounds.”
Like Out Run, Eugene’s project began as one road trip but was changed to another, but where Out Run was relocated to Europe, Eugene expanded his initial remit to the wider USA. “Originally we were going to do Cruis’n Route 66, but we decided that we wanted a broader theme of cruising the States,” Eugene notes. “It was kind of a free licence. We could put Hollywood in there, and The White House and the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we could have virtual tourism, with the passenger saying things like, ‘LA is so cool!’”
With a premise of touring the States in place, Cruis’n USA was a natural title for Eugene’s work in progress, and since it was a road race he ruled out looped courses. “It was a road-touring game, so it wouldn’t have made sense to have circuits,” Eugene points out. “So we made it point to point, and instead of screwing the player by having tracks that were impossible to drive like Hard Drivin’, we wanted something more forgiving, but still with a challenge. We wanted everyday driving with oncoming traffic.”
In order to make overtaking more about skill than luck, Eugene reused a proven concept to help players make informed decisions on when to pass their competitors. “To win, you really had to cut the corners and go over the hills without knowing what the hell was over there,” Eugene reflects. “So I added a little Defender-esque scanner, so you could tell if there was somebody coming around the corner. Although you could just go for it, which added this really neat white-knuckle feel!”
In a further concession to difficulty, Eugene worked out a balance for Cruis’n USA’S AI drivers that would let players catch up with them but not easily overtake them. “I wanted to give players the feeling that there was always hope,” Eugene reasons. “So there was a very forgiving rubber band that would help you quite a bit to catch up. But you still had to pass the cars in front, and the closer you got the less rubber band you had. I liked that you had to earn the win, so what I did was make them corner better than you. It was still fun, though, because you had the speed to pass them on the straights.”
More fun followed thanks to a quirk in an algorithm that Eugene decided to keep, which made the behaviour of Cruis’n USA’S
AI racers somewhat less predictable. “Up until that point the drone cars in racing games went at a constant speed, doing their thing,” Eugene recalls, “but our drone cars actually overtook other cars and did all kinds of crazy stuff. Every now and then the pack would just explode, and it became almost like a demolition derby for a few seconds!”
By comparison, Cruis’n USA’S oncoming traffic was far more safety conscious. But players were bound to collide with it, and Eugene didn’t want overly harsh sanctions. “There were some really severe head-on crashes, but we wanted to get the player back on the road quickly,” Eugene qualifies. “So we had their car do these miraculous flips, and then land right back on their wheels! They were penalised, but only by maybe a couple of seconds. It wasn’t anything super severe.”
A decision made late in development differentiated Cruis’n USA further from other racers, in that its linear level progression was dropped in favour of a flat structure. “Most driving games had you start at the same
ORIGINALLY WE WERE GOING TO DO CRUIS’N ROUTE 66 Eugenejarvis
spot,” Eugene observes. “That was the original idea for Cruis’n USA too. You would start in San Francisco and drive over to Washington DC. But after playtesting it for a few weeks I got tired of just driving in San Francisco! So I thought why not let players go anywhere they wanted?”
The open nature of Cruis’n USA and its focus on fun proved to be highly popular. So naturally, a sequel followed, but Eugene didn’t just want to make Cruis’n USA 2. “We thought about setting it in places around the States that hadn’t appeared in the first game,” Eugene concedes, “but we figured that there was a need for novelty. So this was the world! It meant we could have the Pyramids Of Egypt, and Japan and London. We sent the artists on planes around the globe to all of these places. We were always maybe a year behind schedule, but we certainly had fun!”
The fun had by those making the sequel fed through to its gameplay, with Cruis’n
World’s most notable innovation being the stunts that players could do while racing. “We really developed the stunts,” Eugene enthuses. “Like when you double-pumped the accelerator you did a wheelie, and if you did that you could jump over the car in front of you! So the stunts were fun features, but they were functional too, because doing them reduced your lap time, which helped to give you a high score.”
Another of the follow-up’s novel features challenged players to race on rough surfaces instead of on tarmac, which suited some of its vehicles more than others. “We had some off-road vehicles,” Eugene recollects. “Those were good, because you could drive them strategically. If you had a dirt track with a lot of tight corners then you would go with a more off-road vehicle that could drive on the dirt without a penalty. So we were introducing some strategy there.”
However, the most obvious new element in Cruis’n World, its speed boost, was actually just for show. But of course showing off was all part of the game’s fun. “You know, it’s funny. Boosting didn’t increase your speed at all,” Eugene admits. “But it was so much fun that people did it all the time. You would shoot out from the camera, and you would think you were having this tremendous boost, but it actually didn’t do anything!” Nevertheless, Cruis’n World’s novel additions led to demand for another Cruis’n title. For the third game, Eugene went off the beaten track, and massively ramped up the humour. “We wanted to have impossible places like Atlantis, Mars and the Amazon – but with dinosaurs!” Eugene grins. “I remember we had an Indian track with this elephant that would shit on your windshield! You could also drive into giraffes on the African course and reduce them to chunks of meat!”
Additional comedy was squeezed into Cruis’n Exotica wherever possible. This included amusing big-headed player characters, and the US president launching into orbit. “We were just trying to come up with the craziest of the crazy!” Eugene exclaims. “It was trying to get a laugh out of the room, so we did the most extreme crap ever. We even had Bill Clinton in his hot tub and the whole White House in space!”
In terms of gameplay-related craziness, Cruis’n Exotica’s shortcuts were given supersteep hills, designed to rocket players back onto the main track from a great height. “It was because we loved the big air!” Eugene quips. “In Cruis’n World, there was a Hawaii track, and there was this great shortcut. If there was a sign that said Road Closed then that meant that it was a shortcut. But in Exotica we had many more, and with the jumps they kind of became a new thing.”
The release of Cruis’n Exotica was bittersweet, however, as it arrived as many arcades were closing. So when the series continued, it did so on the Game Boy Advance. “I thought Cruis’n Velocity was cool, and it sold well,” Eugene reviews. “It was pretty fascinating that the developer was able to pull that off, and it was incredible that it was based on a Doom-type engine. It goes without saying that it wasn’t as good as the coin-ops, but for the system it was running on it was really impressive.”
Eugene later produced a coin-op based on The Fast And The Furious, which was ported
WE HAD THIS ELEPHANT THAT WOULD SHIT ON YOUR WINDSHIELD! YOU COULD ALSO DRIVE INTO GIRAFFES AND REDUCE THEM TO CHUNKS OF MEAT! Eugenejarvis
to the Wii as Cruis’n. One of the games’ core concepts was earning cash to fund upgrades. “The in-game money was a cool thing that added a little more depth,” Eugene considers. “As you racked up the mileage, and earned money, you could get upgrades for your cars and unlock secret vehicles. There were maybe eight categories of upgrades, and five levels for each. You could play those games for your lifetime probably, just building up your cars and stuff.”
But cash rewards for racing were far from the games’ only perks. As pulling off stunts, speedy lap times and keeping your car in the air were all recognised. “We wanted to have different rewards, so it wasn’t all down to making money,” Eugene contemplates. “We wanted to give players bragging rights, so we had high-score tables for everything: for every track time, for the air-time, and for the stunts.”
Following the release of Cruis’n, the series appeared to have come to an end. But then Eugene became convinced that a reboot would make a successful arcade title. “It had been 17 years since the previous coin-op Cruis’n Exotica. That was a long hiatus,” Eugene muses. “People were telling me that nobody would remember that crap! But the crazy thing is that the original Cruis’n players now had their own kids, and I thought it might be really cool to bring parents and kids together in an arcade environment.”
The end result – Cruis’n Blast – took full advantage of modern tech. And as well as stunning visuals, this also allowed it to deliver the most insane Cruis’n experience yet. “I remember on the London track you could jump onto the roof of the trains!” Eugene beams. “It was like something out of a James Bond movie. Then the London Eye would just roll down the street! We also revisited the meat chunks, and had a herd of cattle walking across the street out in Texas or wherever the hell it was.”
Aside from referencing the humour of the earlier games, Cruis’n Blast also channelled their disregard for careful driving, while giving players more control over their vehicles. “There was just ridiculous air-time, and we put a little air-steering in there. There were also some really cool tricks that you could do,” Eugene explains. “The handling in the game was so precise, the guys really nailed that – the drifting and everything. So I was really pleased with Cruis’n Blast on a personal level, and for Raw Thrills it turned out to be its best-selling arcade game.”
After three years of
Cruis’n Blast collecting coins, COVID-19 brought the world to a halt. So in 2021, Eugene brought an enhanced version of the game into players’ homes. “When the pandemic came around we were thinking how we would meet our payroll, and we decided to do Cruis’n Blast for the Switch,” Eugene thinks back. “Adapting it for the home player meant that we had to add a tremendous amount of depth, so you had to race to get different cars, and collect cash and keys. There was also just an insane amount of upgrades.”
In addition to keeping Eugene’s company afloat during the Coronavirus years, the popularity of the Switch Cruis’n title has implications for the original. More specifically, he plans to reimagine it for console gamers, who he feels certain will want to cruise the USA. “I have a Cruis’n USA coin-op in my basement, and I love that game,” Eugene says smiling. “I guess I’m biased, but it seems like there’s just a magic there. With the drones, the tracks and all of the crazy stuff it’s kind of a white-knuckle ride! So I’d definitely like to bring something back with Cruis’n USA; 30 years later it’s time to take another look at it. I’ve toyed with bringing it back on the Switch. That could be really fun to do.”
WHEN THE PANDEMIC CAME AROUND WE WERE THINKING HOW WE WOULD MEET OUR PAYROLL, AND WE DECIDED TO DO CRUIS’N BLAST FOR THE SWITCH Eugenejarvis