Thanks for the response.

Yes, both Dozer and Insect (and possibly Semi) are faster, but also unlockable. However, I'm fairly confident that Mercado is better than Fairchild, which is also a base car. I haven't formally confirmed, but in my testing I believe it has very slightly faster acceleration and a bit better turning, which can result in faster race times. For example, I have 0:54:96 in Oval 3-lap with Mercado here:

However, this time is still a fair bit improvable, while I'm not too confident Fairchild could go under 55 seconds as easily and might barely be doable.

Hopper is another base car that might be comparable to Fairchild, but I haven't spent time researching if it would also be faster.

Having rankings for each vehicle can be interesting, although a bit of category overkill and dilution, but I think more focus and competition on Dozer would be less arbitrary and more interesting.

I only learned of this game's existence about a week ago and thought it would be fun to get into speedrunning it. Right now, I'm most interested in pushing for the absolute fastest times with Dozer, but if Fairchild is the popular vehicle, I'll go for all of those records as well.

I see that the few active players of the game have mainly focused on getting times with Fairchild, despite that Dozer and Insect are much faster. Is there a reason players decided to use it, or has it just been a casual approach to speedrunning the game? It also doesn't appear to be due to a lack of awareness as there are a few faster times posted with Dozer.

I would love to compete with others in this game, but I think it would be more fun to go for the absolute fastest times possible rather than self-handicapping with slower vehicles.

I'm not familiar with the greater community so I have no opinion on that matter, and I'll just mention that I mostly played in isolation with occasional chitchats with a couple other players (mostly Paddy), but I would like to offer some general advice.

As we've mentioned a few times in a few places, categories can get messy and deciding how different runs should be ranked together will always be subjective. Nonetheless though, I did try my hands (and feet) at 2-Player mode and it most certainly requires a unique skill and lots of talent. The co-ordination required to even take in all the information on two different screens of differently positioned vehicles moving at different speeds is quite the challenge to perform well!

I will always recommend to anyone to always first be playing for yourself, however that may be, even if it reduces your effective competition to just you and yourself. The reason for playing in such a way is important though. Is it because it is the absolute fastest? Is it because it is the most active? Is it because it is the most fun? Or maybe it's some compromise between those and other factors. In any case though, it's good to evaluate why you put the time into whatever it is you're doing and for what purpose. Enjoyment should usually be one of the top reasons. I personally would respect well-performed runs of 2-Player, ASB, NG, and other various combinations and categories, but for my own personal enjoyment, I kept things simple. Likewise, play what you most enjoy and think about what it is you're trying to do. Is lowering your own times for the sake of itself enjoyable? If it is and isn't at the cost of anything important, then go for it!

It seems like you've spent some time doing just that though, evaluating what you're doing, so I hope whatever decision it is you're making is well thought out and a healthy choice. At the end of the day, it's always your call how important speedrunning video games is.

I fully understand your side of the discussion and as mentioned, I'm just stating my opinion, so don't worry about it or give it any weight. I just personally view "NG" being fresh out of the box, but I understand others disagree. Many other speedrun communities likewise don't follow that perspective, such as Banjo-Kazooie which uses FFM to start a fresh file with all the skills, or Pokemon that resets the game repeatedly before selecting "new game" to affect RNG favourably. Cruis'n USA appears to be another community taking the same perspective which is of course up to the community to decide what they want to allow. People sharing their personal opinions even without intention or expectation to change anything still has value or otherwise Cruis'n USA as it currently stands wouldn't have arrived at where it is today, as with all sorts of other subjective categories, such as 100% in Ocarina of Time, etc.

As mentioned regardless of any rulesets or weight put into my opinion or any other factors, I haven't played NG and am not too personally interested. Perhaps I'll dabble in it if I pick up the game if only to help set some standards for ILs when I have extra free time in the future. I'm pretty confident dual-wielding controllers wouldn't be an issue as I've done so in other games before and as mentioned, have no issue with the required learning involved. On a similar note, I would actually argue strongly in favour of the benefits of playing in first-person view, despite some learning that may be involved in that.

I think you're misunderstanding my viewpoint regarding that. My point regarding NG is not a matter of mechanics or what the player is allowing to be used, but more on the principle on the definition of "New Game". While your main vehicle you control is a fresh file, it's benefiting from a file that is not. There's no need to bring up anything personal as I have not played NG or am personally interested. (Though I did briefly play a couple ILs to help a player set some target times). There's no need at all to worry about my personal opinion on the matter, I just thought it was worth bringing up.

I'm not one to discourage players from doing all they can to improve times in any way they can and I likewise use what's available to me. Certainly not "terrified" of players beating my times :P ; I have always been very open and helpful to those interested and encouraging people to compete to the best of their abilities. Otherwise I would have not shared everything I've found about the game or attempted to build interest.

Category definitions are certainly important as is for most speedrunning games, but as I mentioned previously, it is a very gray area and extremely subjective on building a ruleset, hence why it has changed a few times over already. A player could similarly be even more restrictive than my personal opinion and not allow 4-3-4 or what have you. I haven't brought this up to spite you and I think it's great that you've achieved your sub 20 goal! The timing is coincidental since I had just realized my times were posted on here as mentioned in the other thread.

PAL is definitely advantaged on ASB, but it's not a huge deal for without it. I'm definitely more critical of emulator over console than PAL over NTSC. The only thing that could be significantly impactful would be the lag differences between the two versions, but that's unexplored and likely wouldn't be a huge deal anyway.

Go beat my times, Paddy! Non-ASB of course. ;)

After reading the new content, guides, etc, I thought I would share some additional information from when I researched the game myself a few years ago, as well as a couple other things. The following is an unstructured dump of information that may be worth adding into the big guide and other places. Most of this is assuming the highest vehicle upgrade, and generally with use of the Jeep, unless stated otherwise:

-La Bomba accelerates the fastest, although has slower top speed than many other vehicles. For Chicago IL runs, it was actually better than the Muscle Car due to this, although it became irrelevant after 4-3-4 was discovered. I don't think it serves any use now.

-The Muscle Car is the fastest on-road vehicle and should probably be used for the 2 player trick instead of the Jeep unless I'm missing something.

-I would highly recommend learning to play in first person view since you have a much better view of what's in front of you, which is critical for taking perfect lines. I believe it may also help reduce lag since you see less around you without loading anything extra up ahead.

-When you drive off-road continuously for 20 seconds, the game immediately places you back onto the road (I called these "warps"). They're useful for a few ILs because it helps move you closer to where you're going. This is done on US 101, LA Freeway, and Iowa. Likewise, there are some courses where I intentionally drive back onto the road for a frame or more to cancel out a warp.

-Some objects such as trees, signs, etc are not actual objects and merely sprites that you can drive straight through. Most are in fact objects though and there's no particular pattern on which are which. However, it does not vary run by run and they're always the same. Essentially, you just need to learn which are actual objects and which aren't.

-That said, solid objects can still be driven through with no speed loss if you're immediately in front of it and then past it on the following frame. This is not technically random, but very precise, and I always treated it as a fortunate accident instead of something I intentionally went for.

-The first two levels of the Jeep ("C class" and "B class") are not faster off-road, but they do lose less top speed compared to other vehicles.

-There is never traffic on the right-hand side for 2-player races.

-Traffic tends to appear in patterns, but there is some variance to it, likely from your pace, but possibly also from actual randomness. Which vehicle the traffic appears as seems to always be randomized though and some luck is required on some levels. In particular, Appalachia's best lines requires driving head-on through traffic, and Washington ideally needs smaller vehicles in a few spots in order to squeeze by.

-Playing on easy difficulty or higher for US 101 is optimal so that you can cut through to the right-side off-road faster. The other racers get in the way on the easiest difficulty.

-You can tell which difficulty a player is playing on based on the starting timer (75 for beginner, 70 for easy, etc).

-The timer is simply a frame counter and always ends in 0, 3, or 7. It's not like Mario Kart or other games that calculate additional distance to get a more precise value.

-Regarding soft and hard turning, your lines are generally more important. My method of turning softly was to gently and repeatedly tap the controller stick, rather than a gentle hold.

-As mentioned in the guide, scoring a top 10 time for RTA is detrimental, unless you either fill it up with insane IL times or cut out the difference. I personally think IGT is much more user-friendly, despite not knowing your progress as you play. As you get better though, your IL times should vary less and less, and I generally knew my overall pace without needing to write anything down.

-If you match one of your top 10 times and use the same initials, the time will duplicate itself on there. For example, if you achieve your second 1:30:00, there may appear three instead of just two due to a glitch.

-Always play with maxed out steering or else you can't make the hardest turns.

-Turning is capped, that is, pushing your stick all the way left or right, even with cruise control won't allow you to turn any better.

-When bouncing off a curb or uneven ground, your current speed and direction may lock for a couple seconds. This can be both useful and detrimental, depending on how fast you're going and where you're going.

-Driving downhill and uphill does actually increase and decrease your speeds. Pressing on the controller stick up or down does nothing though.

-The game has lots of invisible walls along the sides and have no pattern as to where they are. They need to simply be learned where they are.

-The best splits are per controller pak, so if you combine various ways in playing the game, they won't necessarily be accurate as to what you're doing. I always just used relative values because of this, for example, if I'm X behind my pak's best split, that means I'm Y behind relative to what I'm actually doing.

-ASB is significantly advantaged on PAL due to a lower frame-rate and essentially playing in slow motion.

-ASB can't accelerate you into infinity and seems to cap around 338 kph. Check out this TAS for a video and more information:

-I recommend playing with metric instead of imperial because it provides a wider range of values so you can get a more precise idea of how fast you're going.

-Here's an image of my control setup in case anyone wants suggestions (note that I never played with 2 controllers):

-I spent a good deal of time optimizing the IL lines and times, and I think they're pretty solid. Where to drive is complicated with the off-road being faster, but I've tested lot of different paths. My times are still fairly improvable, but they're all pretty strong. The weakest I would say is Redwood Forest.

-Using the highest upgrade of Jeep (in 2 player) for "NG" seems silly to me since "NG" should imply a fresh save file. While it is nice to be able to compete under various different metrics, competition also gets more diluted when very few players are playing under the same rules. It's not my call to make, but I'd suggest unifying the rules a lot more.

PAL runs slower in real-time, but the speed of the in-game timer is adjusted so that the finish times of both NTSC and PAL are similar. That is, PAL plays in slow-motion essentially. This makes PAL significantly advantageous for IL runs, and especially for ASB usage due to an easier time mashing gear changes.

For further clarification, all of my runs are NTSC, console, no ASB, and single-player. As I've sure you've learned when researching the game, there are tons of different options and categories (if you will) of playing. Part of this is why I lost interest in playing and why I stuck with what I personally viewed as "clean gameplay". Of course though, that's extremely subjective and arbitrary, and hence why I didn't previously submit my times.

I do encourage always finding ways to go faster and to play in those ways, but if I were to play the game again, I would just continue in the same manner as I previously have. That said, I don't currently have the time or interest, but I am happy to help those who do.

Two other things I want to mention:

1. Paddy's IL time for US 101 "NG+" uses ASB and should be correctly labelled.

2. Many of Paddy's times are PAL and not NTSC. This is worth mentioning as PAL has a slower timer than NTSC so that the finish times match. That said, I don't know exactly which runs are on PAL or NTSC, but if someone takes the time to analyze his runs, it can probably be figured out. I believe all of his ASB times, including the one mentioned above are PAL.

Just for clarity in case there's any confusion or misunderstanding, I'm saying that two of my runs were posted for me, which should be removed as I subsequently replace them. The only difference is they're all under my own account.

I'm currently posting my times under my own account (this one) so that they will all be on here, they are just pending moderator approval.

Hello, I noticed the other day that someone had posted a couple of my speedruns of Cruis'n USA and also made an account under my username. I generally am not interested in RTA, usage of emulator, etc, which is why I had not previously posted my times here.

However, seeing that this game is getting a little bit of a resurgence, I think it would be best for the community if I had all of my runs linked here. Naturally, I would prefer to do this myself and will do so after this post.

Could a moderator please remove the runs posted by "Icyspeedruns" and for the user of that account to delete it as well? It would be greatly appreciated!

On a somewhat related note, I did spend a fair bit of time researching the game when I played it, analyzing runs frame-by-frame and the like, and it seems that the new wave of community members haven't found everything just yet (although some new things I missed were also discovered). I'll share this extra information when I have the time to remember everything and write it out.

Happy cruis'n!