"But I am just one man" (Daytona USA 2001 (DC))

Member Name: pooky

Product:	Daytona USA 2001 (DC)
Date:	22/05/01 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun

Disadvantages: Short lived, Feels dated

A long time ago, back in the era of Amigas and Megadrives, when 16bit was king, I bought issue 1 of a magazine called 'Click'. It only made it to issue 2 before vanishing from the shelves, no doubt having been filed under "Good idea at the time". 'Click' was novel because it came on video, with filmed interviews of game creators along with videos of games in action. One particular interview was with two groups of programmers both porting the arcade game 'Indy Racer' to home computers, one to the 16bit Amiga, the other, the 8bit Commodore 64. When asked about the problems of coding for an 8bit machine the programmer replied that, unlike 16bit, you couldn't hope to accurately replicate an arcade game on an 8bit machine. Instead you created a game which felt the same, only when placed side by side would you realise the difference between them.

This is an important point to note, because what a game feels like to play is eminently more important than how accurately it plays. Games are constantly pushing the boat out in terms of graphical and physical realism, but these factors don't always make a game much fun to play. Look at 'Shenmue' with its much criticised 'real time' whereby the player often spends large amounts of time waiting for the day to pass so that they can rendezvous with another character. Or 'Driving Emotion Type S' with its real physical car dynamics which cause the cars to handle in the most appalling way imaginable. We play games for fun, not to accurately simulate our environment.

Daytona USA 2001, more than any other recent Dreamcast release, harks back to this age of programming. But then that?s to be expected, since Daytona is now over 7 years old and although this version has been tagged 2001 it is really a carbon copy of the original arcade version with a couple of extras.

Daytona is all about the thrills and spills of circuit racing and as an arcade r
acer it distilled the essence of these races to create an incredibly fast and very simple game. Handling was unrealistic and powersliding in the most over the top fashion was necessary to negotiate corners but with a turn of speed few could match and gorgeous visuals, coupled with the ability to race a whopping 39 other cars at a time, it was an instant hit.

The Dreamcast version has the three tracks from the original arcade, two from the Saturn version and three all new exclusive to Dreamcast. There are also four cars to chose from each differing in respect to acceleration, top speed and handling. The graphics are pretty impressive, sticking firmly at 60 frames per second (as fast as games ever get) even during split screen two player races, which can also include 10 computer opponents should you wish. The car models look good, that is until they've seen a few badly driven laps at which point they'll be looking rather worse for wear. The tracks too are arcade perfect, incredibly colourful with neat little additions such as flocks of birds swooping overhead. Unfortunately there is a downside, rather more to do with the games age than anything else. By today's standards they all seem a bit dull. The vibrant colour palette cannot hide the monotonous textures used for the much of the track. The reflections off of the cars also look rather too much like a simple animation instead of actual real time lighting, leaving a fake look which irritates rather than astounds. But at least it's all flying past sooooooo fast that you probably won't notice.

The other sore point is the cars incredibly twitchy handling. Start the game up first time and you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd made a tragic mistake buying what seems to be an uncontrollable mess of a racing game. Thankfully the controls can be configured including steering sensitivity. Trust me, you'll want to set it on the lowest of the low. Even after this though, Daytona
is one of the first games I've played where you really absolutely need to use the full range of the analogue stick. Simply using its extremities will cause your vehicle to oversteer constantly, resulting in frequent visits to Mr crash barrier. Once you are accustomed to it though, there is little problem with steering.

The one player mode consists of three championships, each unlocked after completing the previous one. It is necessary to place 5th or above to progress and it's certainly no walk in the park. With 40 cars competing, Daytona is tough, very tough. Multiplayer is limited to two players and although, as already mentioned, up to ten computer cars can also race, it would have been nice to have a four player option. Even with the loss of some graphical detail, I'm sure the Dreamcast could have handled it. Those expecting to hook up and play over the phone are in for a disappointment. Incredibly, even though Japan and the good old U.S. of A get full online play for eight people this feature has been cut for the European release. All we get is an online table of players best times to beat. This is scant consolation and without the online component the games longevity must be questioned.

Daytona was a classic arcade game and is still a blast to play. I may have sounded overly critical during my review, but I loved the original and am slightly saddened that the rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia have now been removed leaving me with the feeling that time has moved on. Yes it's fun, fast and playable, but unrealistic handling, dated graphics and the inexcusable removal of online play mean that it's not the classic I hoped it would be. Make no mistake, Daytona 2001 is good but with Metropolis Street Racer and Gran Turismo now the standard to which all driving games must be judged, it just isn't good enough.

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