First Impressions on Daytona Championship USA 3 with off-screen pictures
http://arcadeheroes.com/2016/11/14/i...aximum-tune-5/
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The game I’ve been getting the most tweets about is Sega’s return to Daytona. Yesterday a pic leaked showing the 8 cabinet setup that amusingly had myself and a Sega staff member there discussing the game. So you might have seen that. But today, with Sega’s permission, I got to grab a couple of pics as well as getting a chance to play the 3 available tracks. There will be six in the final but only three available for the show.
It is important to note that this is still essentially a beta game so many changes will take place between now and the release based on QA and player feedback. A couple of potential changes to the cab were mentioned but we’ll wait and see.
Sega has 8 cabinets here but they are only linking the two groups of 4 for now. The game is slated for a March/April 2017 release so the next time we’ll see a more complete software package is at the AMOA/AAMA Amusement Expo in March…maybe at the January UK arcade expo that happens.
I have not played the original Daytona USA in a very long time so it’s hard to remember the handling but in playing it, it felt very solid. There is still damage that happens to the cars and you can slide off the track if you aren’t careful. It has pitstops too although I only watched someone else try that.
The current build has an “Up/Down” shifter but still maps to four gears. This will likely change for the production build.
The first, beginner track isn’t the most exciting, I prefer the other two tracks I played – either way this is a far superior game to NASCAR from a few years ago. There are a few “artistic liberties” taken with a couple of track aesthetics – mainly the removal of the slot machine stuff due to the locations this game may go to. I also saw the operator mode which is jam packed with options for the operator to enjoy. In particular if the game ends up at a Chuck E Cheeses, they have a preset “Kid mode” that it can be set to to make it easier for the little ones to enjoy.
They also have several features for making tournaments easier to run for operators. Many ops did run big tournaments with the game so that is welcome. In particular, it can run brackets and announce which player is next on the LCD marquee screen. Otherwise this marquee will show the live camera feeds. This party mode is not active yet so that’s all we have for it for now but for ops looking for that, it’s worth noting.
As mentioned, the game has a live camera – meaning that it is constantly recording and pumping that feed into the game depending on what is needed. This is mainly for multiplayer though – that way you can see the live reaction from your opponents as you play and there is an occasional billboard that shows your own feed on there.
Graphically, this game looks very sharp. It runs on PC hardware (not the Sega Nu or Ringedge…maybe we could call it the Europa 2) and the color palette seems to be slightly over-saturated to provide that Bright Blue Skies look that the original game was known for. The cars are streamlined instead of having the chunky polys and the lighting is great, especially on the 3rd track where it takes place in the evening so you get some good shadow effects going on. You can also see reflections on your hood when in the first person hood mode. They also seem to be using anti-aliasing as I did not notice any jagged edges and the textures look great. It slightly reminds me of the KO Drive (a never released Sega race) look but further improved.
From what I can recall of the original, this “feels” like Daytona USA but it has new paint and features that to me make it appealing to the current arcade market. I look forward to spending more time on it but also seeing the completed software.
http://i.imgur.com/1v3LrT3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zUBHf4j.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UlhgvoO.jpg
Can't wait to see the videos, tomorrow, AFAIK.
