It’s mid September, spooky season is quickly approaching, I’ve started grad classes, and the weight of the world is on my shoulders.
However, a light shines through the thick cloud, and its essence is Cruis’n.
The Cruis’n franchise is a classic 90’s arcade series of racing games that all had ports to the N64 console.
I have some beautiful memories of Cruis’n World, both at my local Chuck-E-Cheese arcade, and my great aunt’s house. It was a time of innocence, and the foundation of my core creative being. I didn’t worry about the problems of the world, and I was just naive enough to not worry about any issues at home. It was a time before 9/11, where life was less complicated, and western society may have been at the peak.
Cruis’n is the innocence of a time long forgotten.
Cruis’n is a fun, cheesy, and janky mess that is fully self aware of what it is. The N64 ports are especially watered down compared to the arcade, but for some reason had this addicting quality to it. There was actually some sense of skill to it, and it had 4 player co-op to boot!
I spent countless hours playing it over my great aunt’s with my uncle and his friends.
Cruis’n World especially had this perfect mix of absurdity, creativity, and colorful punch. The vehicle variety, levels, music, and menus just oozed with personality. It was purposefully ridiculous, and oftentimes obnoxious. However, the nature of Cruis’n comes from its arcade cabinet origins. Those arcades had to draw people in, and the way to do that was to juice the hell out of every element of it.
Those of you reading this know I love game design, but I’ve always felt like an outsider. I love the dead, forgotten, and niche genres that games had to offer. Arcade racing was this weird racing game niche that offered high-impact personality, satisfying but simple gameplay, and not much content beyond that. Arcades are meant to be little bite sized sessions of fun, and so you couldn’t include massive unlock systems, hidden vehicles/levels/, etc.
The most arcade racing ports from the era took those core racing mechanics, and added enough content to call it a complete shippable product.
Cruis’n USA, Cruis’n World, and Cruis’n Exotica are all examples of some wonderful arcade racing game ports. Okay, I said a paragraph or two before that they were watered down, but that was in regards to some of the level set pieces and interactivity.
Anyway, they made a terrible Fast and Furious Arcade port on Wii without the FF license, and called it Cruis’n. It got awful reviews, and yeah, I’m not a big fan of it either. We ignore that one haha.
Cut to about 2017, and I caught wind of this company called Raw Thrills (whom I will rant about at the end of this), making a new Cruis’n game, backed by Nintendo. Welp, it got announced, and I was only able to watch direct arcade footage on Youtube until getting to play it at my local bowling alley, of all places.
Yes, I seriously searched around for the cabinet to try it out, that’s how much of a Cruis’n nerd I am.
Anyway, I played it, and I was just…whelmed, to say the least. It was okay. Maybe my expectations were too high? I just found the gameplay and variety lacking, and that’s by arcade standards!
However, I knew a port would come soon enough, and that meant more content.
Fast forward to 2021, and a Switch port is FINALLY announced. It was a day one physical purchase for me, and after 3 days of owning it, I’m like 10+ hours into it, without shame.
Once again, I felt like the weight of the world wasn’t on my shoulders, and I was transported to a more carefree time of my youth. The arcade game was not only ported, but there is a ton of extra content and gameplay tweaks to it all.
Nostalgia was not blinding in this case, because the arcade didn’t leave me with huge expectations, but what we got was a wonderful love letter to the original Cruis’n trilogy, with a very addicting gameplay loop, a wide variety of vehicles and levels to unlock, and a surprising amount of polish.
I could say, without a shadow of a doubt, this is on par with the originals, and possibly the best of the franchise. It’s a wonderful evolution of the originals, with plenty of fun to offer.
I don’t want this write-up to be a review of the game, because quite frankly, a video review would do it much more justice.
This is moreso a confirmation from a diehard Cruis’n fan, game designer, and car enthusiast, that the genre can still be fun in today’s age.
The game is so fun, in fact, most of my constructive criticisms of the game are almost not really constructive enough, and a tad bit nitpicky.
For example, the game uses licensed vehicles from General Motors and Nissan, but that’s it. The real licensed vehicle variety is very small, and the rest of the vehicles in the roster are either really goofy or generic (not generic in a derogatory way, more so ambiguous to avoid licensing) LIke, you can play as a shark, unicorn, helicopter, and ufo haha. I think they jumped the shark a bit, full pun intended.
The larger vehicles that are in the game are also not in scale to avoid clipping issues with the starting line of vehicles. I get why they did it, but it drives me nuts driving a double decker bus that’s the size of a hummer. It just looks weird, and half the fun of drifting a bus, firetruck, or whatever, is the absurd size.
I think the game could use a handful of more licensed cars, especially classic ones.
The customization is also a bit cartoonish, which is half charming, and half annoying. I can’t quite tell yet haha. The nostalgia in me is fighting the logical automotive enthusiast.
On the flipside, the vehicles that are there all look great, and have such a wonderful arcadey weight to them in-game that I love. However, another tiny nitpick, is I wish the drivers had some more personality and animations attached to juice it up, kind of like Crazy Taxi. You see, a lot of the vehicles are opened top, with the driver clearly visible.
To counterpoint, the levels are so jam packed with set pieces and personality, you hardly notice. Like seriously, these levels are so fun to race through, it had me grinning ear to ear with the life they all had put into them. The dev team did a wonderful job of recycling assets in a clever way, while making everything feel so fresh. Each “tour” has you cruising through different levels with different themes, and each tour has you exploring different parts of that level. For example, I believe you drive through Rio on the first tour, but on the storm themed tour, it has you exploring a different layout of Rio, with added sections and epic set pieces. Hell, I feel like saying “recycling assets” does these devs an injustice, because they aren’t the same track every tour.
The tracks all have really nice nods to the old Cruis’n games too, with Rio having a wonderful underwater glass tunnel segment. You could tell the team went back and analyzed what made the old games so captivating.
My only major criticism is that I wish the game had some more music to go along with these levels. There seems to be a severe lack of music variety, but thankfully what is there is very fun. The Cruis’n Blast theme is as cheesy as ever, and I’m so happy they embraced that.
Overall, Cruis’n Blast is self aware of how cheesy and over-the-top its presentation is, with addicting updated racing mechanics to bring the franchise into a new age.
I am so happy this exists, and for a few fleeting moments in this tough world, I have childlike joy “blasting” through each track in my wild ride.
My only qualm is with Raw Thrills, and how they’ve really just ignored any efforts I’ve made to help contribute to this game and the development team.
I never sent “fan mail”, but rather legitimate applications with heart put into them. With each passing improvement to my resume and portfolio, I would send something to them.
I even recently tried to connect with an associate producer on LinkedIn, with a friendly note of professional admiration.
The person looked at my profile, and ignored my request. I was heartbroken. I was heartbroken about all of it. This is a game that I was more than qualified to work on, and if a recruiter wanted a game dev who grew up on a steady diet of arcade racing and Cruis’n, I’m the guy!
Like, am I just the crazy Cruis’n fanboy at the Raw Thrills office? Not one person could ever politely send a reply email?
That individual on LinkedIn couldn’t have connected with me, and just not followed me? Is humility dead?
Words through a text do not describe how hurt I am to play something I love so much, but could not contribute to. This isn’t like Twisted Metal. Sony is a huge monolithic corporation, and I understand that getting to work on the new Twisted Metal game in development is impossible, especially when I don’t know which studio it is. My applications at Sony probably get sifted by some bot, and scanned over in a second by a recruiter.
Raw Thrills is smaller, the Cruis’n license is smaller, and overall a much more personable place to work for. You know a real human saw those applications.
I’m sure my old professor, Dan Rose, is reading this, and saying to himself, “you aren’t entitled to anything.”, which he’s totally right.
However, let me put this into perspective. Working on some huge AAA franchise is like dreaming of spending the night with your celebrity crush. Working on Cruis’n is like bumping into the local news anchor at the grocery store haha. The stakes and expectations are already so damn low, I don’t know how low I can get haha.
Regardless of my own struggles as a game dev, Cruis’n Blast is a fantastic little piece of arcade racing treasure, that I hope a new generation of gamers get to discover.
Cruis’n is one of those franchises that made me want to be a game designer. The gameplay is so dead simple, but combined with all of the fun over-the-top elements, you are left with an addicting, but relaxing, time killer. I will continue to 100% the game like the nerd I am, and introduce it to my friends to play some local split-screen.
Keep on Cruis’n,
Brandon Petroski
