However it’s still the Dreamcast version of the game that delivers the most amount of content, adding another three courses to the roster. The two new courses, National Park Speedway and Desert City, are both about as complex as the arcade’s ‘Medium’ circuit and are great fun to race. This might not sound like much, but the extra content makes the game feel a lot more substantial, especially as one of the original tracks is the classic Daytona oval. It’s a really great oval, but an oval none the less. The initial release of Daytona USA for Saturn includes the three arcade tracks, but the expanded Championship Circuit Edition that was released a year later (1996) adds another two. Naturally the SEGA Saturn version doesn’t stand much of a chance visually, but in truth the three games all offer slightly different, and it can be difficult to decide on a definitive version. If you’re looking for a true port then it’s the 20011 Xbox Live Arcade/PSN release that delivers this, and also ups the internal resolution and reformats the game for 16:9 widescreen. The Dreamcast release, Daytona USA 2001, was really SEGA’s first chance to effectively recreate the game, although it’s let down by poor handling and physics.
The Daytona series is a confusing sequence of releases, and one that only truly makes sense when looked at as a series of attempts to accurately replicate the arcade game on console. The home console version of Daytona is a far from perfect port, but it’s still a unique conversion of this classic game.
Two years later and SEGA was porting their arcade hits to the Saturn, a system not exactly famous for its 3D processing power. The Model 2 was incredibly advanced, and at the time Daytona USA was perhaps the most impressive looking game ever made. Whilst the mid 90s are now generally remembered for SEGA’s clumsy add-ons, overpriced peripherals, and the commercial failings of the Saturn, it’s easy to forget that at the same time the company was dominating the arcade market. Back in 1993 SEGA released the original Daytona USA, the first title to utilise their new SEGA Model 2 hardware.