by Susan Davis

SEGA has released a beta version of its new Daytona USA racing program for review. While the program does a good job of porting its popular arcade and game machine version to the PC, it far from taps the potential inherent in the PC. While SEGA enthusiasts who have a home computer will enjoy playing the familiar game on their PC, Daytona USA has little new to offer to the PC game market.

Like most racing games, Daytona offers a variety of basic options for the different levels and types of players. When you start a new game, you can set options for three different levels of difficulty in the tracks, and four different cars -- two with manual transmission and two with automatic transmission. You can change between five levels of difficulty for the game, and set the difficulty level for the computer-controlled enemy cars. You also can change the quality of the graphics display between two settings, which may improve speed and handling on slower machines.

The game requirements are pretty steep, like many Windows 95 games. However, what you get for that requirement seems pretty limited. Even in PC mode, the game seems little more than a simple driving game. The four different “cockpit” views don’t vary much, and there is not much realism in the different views.

However, the graphics for the tracks and the scenery is pretty good. It’s not as good as I would have expected in 32K colors, but it is reasonable, and it doesn’t seem to detract from the smoothness of the game much. Still, decent graphics in a simplistic game just doesn’t seem worth the trade-off.

One feature that is nice for beginning players is that the car crashes don’t end your game. All they do is slow you down. If you crash really hard, you can flip the car, which is pretty fun to watch once or twice, but, like many games, it is boring after the seventh or eighth crash in a short while. If you are an expert player, you might find the simple model of the racing game a bit boring, but the courses at least become more challenging, which may make the game interesting for longer.

I also had a bit of trouble with the controls. Daytona seems a bit limited in its control mechanisms. If you have a PC gamepad or a SEGA controller, you’ll do fine, but my special driving controller, complete with steering wheel, refused to work with Daytona, even though it works fine under Windows 95. However, Daytona USA is a beta version, and additional functionality may be added with the production release.

The sound effects are okay, but, again, nothing special. There is little variation in the effects, and the music, while upbeat, is little more than the standard arcade fare. Also, even though the entire game installs to the hard drive, you have to put the CD in to get any sound.

Daytona sports two main options: Arcade and PC selections. However, in switching between them, I couldn’t really find any difference. If I was more familiar with the arcade version, I might be able to come up with some idea, but it really doesn’t seem any different. In fact, very little about Daytona USA seems different.

If you just like racing around the track, watching the clock, avoiding other cars, and trying to beat your record or win the race, you’ll probably enjoy Daytona USA just fine. But if you’re looking for a truly Windows 95 rendition of a racing game, Daytona USA barely even fits the profile of a Windows 95 game. Yes, it runs well under Windows 95, but that hardly makes it a “Windows” game. Manufacturers have already produced the whole gamut of Windows and Windows 95 racing games, and many have more features and more functionality than this basic SEGA conversion.