[JennyGenesis]

So here’s my little mini review of the recently released XBLA port of Daytona USA.

So Daytona USA is a game I have loved for years and years so I was very excited when the XBLA port was announced and they did a fine damn job of porting this game as well.

So instead of just taking the arcade game and having it run on an emulator some changes have been made, for starters the game has received updated graphics, but nothing to extensive, just cleaning up of the textures which do look very nice, it’s still not “with” todays standards but the game still looks very nice and by default the game screen fills up the width and height of your TV/Monitor.

The biggest problem with the game is the controls! Goodness me I have never encountered controls this bad on a racing game before, you have to very very very slightly move the thumbstick to get the car to turn the corner otherwise a slight movement too much and the back end comes out and you end up loosing all your speed and understeering. You can’t even adjust the control settings either, you can change the button configuration but there is no option to change the steering sensitivity when using a controller, there are sensitivity options for a steering wheel but none for a controller. Even the controls for the menus are bad as well! I found myself mashing the B button trying to go back on the menus but for some reason, to go back in the menus you have to press START…

The multiplayer works in the same way as the original arcade cabinets hooked up where instead of 1 player racing against 39 cars all the plays race against each other with the option of having other cars on the track, they did a very fine job with this, the only lag I had were some very rare occasions where opponent cars would shake. I did have a very strange glitch where I was in 1st, the guy in 2nd overtook me and about half a lap later the game decided that I was in first again, so the other guy had to get around the track and lap me which he managed to do without me slowing down, when he overtook me again the game recognized him as being in first.

But overall, it is a great port 800MSP, I recommend it to any Daytona USA fans and it even has a rewind feature which is becoming common in driving games these days.