Cruis'n USA is a racing video game developed by TV Games Inc. and published by Nintendo. It was first released in arcades in 1994 by Midway Games, with a port to the Nintendo 64 developed by Leland Interactive Media The Cruis'n USA cabinet shown at the Consumer Electronics Show was actually running on a modified JAMMA board. Cruis'n USA runs on a Midway V-Unit, which is very different from what would become the Silicon Graphics based Nintendo 64. The Midway V-unit consists of a 50 MHz TMS32031 CPU, a 10 MHz ADSP-2115 DSP for sound, and a custom 3D chip that can render perspective-correct but unfiltered quads at a high resolution (512 × 400 pixels).
The San Diego division of Williams Entertainment, Leland Interactive Media, the developers of the Nintendo 64 version, had to downgrade most of the arcade graphics to accommodate home console hardware. Originally announced as a Nintendo 64 launch game along with Killer Instinct Gold, less than a month before launch day it was pulled from the lineup and returned to Williams for retooling because it did not meet Nintendo's quality standards. Several elements of the game, such as the ability to run over animals and depictions of Bill and Hillary Clinton on a hot tub, were censored from the Nintendo 64 version. During the last couple of months of development, people sent letters or emails about the censorship. Jarvis also publicly objected to it: "It seems like they don't have a sense of humor. I don't know what's wrong with these people."
Reception
The arcade version of Cruis'n USA was critically and commercially successful. and Play Meter listed the title to be the second most-popular arcade game in December 1994. It was one of America's top five best-selling arcade video games of 1994, receiving a Diamond Award from the American Amusement Machine Association (AMAA). It went on to be America's highest-grossing dedicated arcade cabinet of 1995.
Next Generation reviewed the arcade version of the game; while viewing the game as graphically less impressive than its rivals, they praised other aspects that could rival games like Out Run from Sega.
The Nintendo 64 version met with mixed reviews, and earned a GameRankings score of 50.63% based on 16 reviews. Peer Schneider of IGN and Kraig Kujawa of Electronic Gaming Monthly both said the two-player split-screen mode is the highlight of the game, while noting that the frame rate problems are even worse in this mode. It was the sixth best-selling video game of the 1996 Christmas shopping season according to TRST data, with three of the five higher-selling games also being Nintendo 64 games. By the end of 1997 it had sold over a million copies. In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the arcade version 63rd on its "Top 100 Video Games."
Reviewing the Virtual Console release in Nintendo Life, Damien McFerran echoed many of the original criticisms about jerky frame rate, poor collision detection, and lack of speed and excitement, and said that even the arcade original is a fairly poor game.