Daytona USA #BestOfSaturnGold

Daytona USA roared into gamers’ Saturns at launch in the West as the most hotly anticipated arcade conversion of early 1995. SEGA’s promise of “arcade in the home” was fully realized as the uber-successful AM2 coin-op came to the living room ready for duty in new Saturn owners’ consoles. All courses converted over? Check. All of Mitsuyoshi’s crazy but good soundtrack? Check. That sweet, sweet gameplay? Yup, check! And those glorious, creamy 3D graphics and rock-solid framerate? Uh…

There were rumors of the Saturn being a complicated machine to program for, and where there’s smoke, there’s usually a fire. To see Daytona USA running on a home console was a revelation, but it was obvious there were major compromises to make it happen. The framerate stuttered at a third of the arcade’s rate, the textures were much more pixelated, and the pop-in — already present in the coin-op to an extent — was really bad in some places. Then as gamers did the comparison with PlayStation’s Ridge Racer, itself an arcade conversion but optimized very well, it made Daytona USA — and by extension the Saturn itself — appear like a dumpster fire.

And yet, in the darkest hour, hope springs eternal. The game’s presentation, though basic, is charming and to the point. The music, very unusual for a racing game, is happiness-on-disc. The gameplay, arguably any game’s most important feature, was utterly tight and, most importantly, buckets of fun. The Saturn would receive several more versions of Daytona USA during its run, though through the lens of time, the original effort may have been — for better or worse — the best. Today, Daytona USA on the Saturn is still a blast to play, and the overall package is a nostalgic trip down to a time where games looked rough but generated joy in playing. Bring on the blue, blue skies!