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So, this review is not about the out of the box version, but of the patched 3D accelerated one. When I first played Daytona USA on the PC I was so disappointed by the poor graphics and sluggish framerates, just like its Saturn brother. So, when Sega released the Deluxe version of the game, that contained the 3 original Daytona tracks, plus 3 extra ones, including one never seen on the console port I really wasn't moved at all... But when I saw the Direct 3D patch, I began to fantasize about how my Voodoo2 board would make me finally have a 100% arcade perfect port of the game... I was wrong. The graphics on this game are awful... In fact, when I installed the patch and ran the game for the first time, I actually thought there was some incompatibility of some sort because the game looked way too bad... I restarted the game, now using the Riva 128 3D, to find out the horrible fact that the game DID look that bad. Looking through the options I found the way to turn on bilinear filtering and perspective correction, and the way to disable the horrendous fog... I prefer the clipping, in my opinion. Then I found a 'High Polygons' setting, which I turned on... Finally the game was much nicer then the vomit inspiring defaults the patch uses. This game is Daytona.... The king of racers (in fact, I still like Daytona more than its sequel!). So, the fun blast of racing at high speed is there at least... Tracks are varied with decent attention to details like the running horses, flocking birds, etc. Also the game has several environment options like Night Driving, Dawn, Summer, etc... The problem there is that they basically changed the colors on the screen, without any other feature... For example, on night driving, the cars have no headlights -- which could lead you to say that Stock Cars do not have headlights... But, if that were the case, why light posts were off and everyone in the dark?! So, basically they changed the screen to a dark blueish one. However, the speed illusion of the arcade is a bit lost here and you feel like driving at 55 Mph. Not bad, but definitively not too much adrenaline pushing. Soundwise, after all the hours I spent on the regular version, my brain was damaged enough to actually like the Daytonaaaaaaaaa tunes of the arcade / Saturn version... And unfortunately, they are gone in the Deluxe version... music now sounds a bit worse (yeah, I didn't believe that was possible either). But it fits nicely with the game. The game also features netplay and it works very well on LANs (local area Networks), but for Internet Play, there is lag and several other problems. I also must say that the game crashed my PC several times during playing, so be warned. This review sounds too harsh on Sega, like all my reviews do, but this game is actually kind-of cool. It is entertaining and a great buy for $15... But beware, there are other similar games like Ultimate Race Pro out there which are WAY superior in graphics and playability and cost the same $15 already. If you are a Daytona lover, grab this one -- don't bother to play until the 3D patch is installed -- and HAVE FUN!
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