This was a driving simulation that brought to the arcades a hugely overlooked element of actual driving: singing along to the radio. While critics at the time lauded the game’s visual fidelity and technological ambition, Daytona USA stood out to players because it had personality. Mention the game to anybody who loitered in arcades in the 1990s, and they are likely to share his enthusiasm. Starkey has a whole catalogue of Daytona USA memories to call on, and he’s not alone. I remember buying the Sega Saturn version in 1996 and feeling disappointed. I remember the eight-player deluxe version in Trocadero’s Funland with the TV cameras pointing at the race leader’s face. As a result, I can achieve first position on every course now. “I’d play off all the credits with friends after hours. So on Sundays, Starkey found himself with a whole arcade to choose from, and a day’s worth of change that he absolutely had to put through one machine. “My boss would tell me to put all that change into an arcade machine on Sunday because I wasn’t in on Mondays, so he could open the cabinet and re-use it all.” “In 1995 I worked in an arcade that had no change machine, so I would carry pound coins in a bum-bag,” he says.
He installed Daytona USA at his arcade (where game credits are free after visitors pay for entry) partly because he makes a living from popular cabinets, but partly because, for all the arcade games he’s worked with, Daytona USA has special meaning to him.
Mark Starkey, the owner of Heart of Gaming, is a long-time employee in the arcade industry. It’s frenetic close-quarters stuff, with frequent hair-raising crashes and tyre-scorching escapes. You select from three circuits, start at the back of the pack, then zoom through up to 40 other vehicles, attempting to finish the race before the timer runs out. The set-up is familiar to anyone who’s ever popped a coin in an arcade machine with a steering wheel welded to the front. Still chugging along in arcades the length and breadth of the land.
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