Cruis'n World is a 1996 racing game developed by Midway Games and published by Nintendo. It is the sequel to the 1994 arcade racer Cruis'n USA. A port for the Nintendo 64 developed by Eurocom was released in 1998, and was the best received of the Cruis'n ports.
Cruis'n World allows players to race on various tracks around the world. The game also features more cars than Cruis'n USA. This game introduced stunts to the Cruis'n series. They served to dodge obstacles, take close curves, and gain extra seconds of time.
Gameplay
Arcade version screenshot, depicting the Australia stage
Cruis'n World features the same core gameplay as its predecessor, in that the player races on different tracks under a time limit to reach the goal, passing checkpoints along the way to help extend this time limit. The races take place in different destinations around the world, such as Hawaii, Japan, Australia, China, Africa, Egypt, Moscow, Germany, Italy, France, England, Mexico, New York City and Florida. The cars now have the ability to perform stunts during races such as wheelies, which give short speed bursts, and aerial flips, which deduct seconds from the final race time, allowing for the player to achieve a better position in the records' table.[3] Should the player go through all stages including Florida, the car would be taken by a Space Shuttle for a trip to the moon.
The Nintendo 64 version adds an extra track on the Moon, which is unlocked once the player reaches the end of the "Cruise the World" mode, and also features an exclusive Championship mode, in which players race on circuit tracks set in the game's different stages rather than the arcade's road tracks, competing for points which allow the player to unlock upgrades for the cars.[citation needed] The game supports up to four players using a split screen.[4]
Development
The developers of this game sent artists on a round-the-world trip to digitally capture sights and major tourist attractions.[5]
The development of the Nintendo 64 version started in 1996 after the development of the Nintendo 64 version of Cruis'n USA. Eugene Jarvis had admitted that Williams Entertainment's port of Cruis'n USA was not good, so they promised the game to be an arcade perfect port. Eurocom took the Cruis'n license and decided to spend more time on the game than in Cruis'n USA. In early 1997, Nintendo announced that Cruis'n World would be coming to the Nintendo 64 in the fall, but the game was silently delayed until 1998.
The game was displayed at the 1996 AMOA show, where it won the award for Most Innovative New Title.[20]Electronic Gaming Monthly named it a runner-up for Arcade Game of the Year.[21] A Next Generation critic commented that, like Cruis'n USA, Cruis'n World has an unsurpassed sense of arcade-style driving, saying that the players can drive fast, knock the cars off the road and get into chaotic multi-car collisions. At the same time, he found this a shortcoming, since the game is very quickly mastered. He praised the track design as being more elaborate and requiring more skill than its predecessor, but said the pop-in remains as bad as before.[18]
The Nintendo 64 port was met with mixed reception. On review aggregation site GameRankings it held a score of 63% based on 14 reviews.[6]
Next Generation reviewed the Nintendo 64 version of the game, rating it two stars out of five, criticising the game having minimal technique and difficulty.[19]
