We’re about half-way through with May 2017, which means that Summer is soon upon us. Summertime usually sees a few new arcade releases to grace venues around the world and among those is one with a bit of anticipation behind it – Sega’s Daytona Championship USA.
Part of that build-up has included a cover story on the latest Replay Magazine.
We’ve covered the game a few times on the site as information has trickled out every now and then since we got out hands on the game this past November. Among those details were brief mentions of a “Party Mode” that operators could use to run tournaments. Today, we have a little more information about how this will work.
Party Mode Details
When at IAAPA, I caught a brief glimpse of the operator menu, noticing that it was more detailed than a typical operator menu. There were many adjustment options, allowing the operator to customize the game in various ways that not all games allow you to do.
When it comes to Party Mode, it has been designed to give operators the ability to pre-program private events and run them right from the game. Using the video marquee system, this becomes even easier to setup and operate.
In case you hadn’t heard, Daytona is coming back
What the operator has access to set-up the following:
- Name the event (i.e. Arcade Heroes Birthday Cup!)
- Set number of racers (from 8-128)
- Optionally add their names
- Set desired track and race length
- Optionally set transmission to Automatic only
- Set a schedule.
Once the allotted time and date is reached, the cabinets will inform general players that they are reserved for a private event and prevent any new normal games from being started. Anyone playing when the event starts will be able to finish their game.
When all units are vacant, it will invite racers to their seats by name (or player number) and automate first round races, quarter finals, semi-finals and a final event to find the best racers from the set group. The billboard/marquee monitor system will provide in-race information and results throughout the event.
The DCUSA Party Mode system is designed for 4 or more cabinets and operators can “reserve” some cabinets in a larger configuration so that the general public can still play normally on some cabinets while a Party is run on the remaining ones.
This means that operators don’t have to purchase their own 3rd party system to run such events. Between the tournament history that Daytona USA had and given the popularity of “eSports” these days, I imagine that the new Daytona could tap into that as well.
I have also confirmed that the game will enjoy additional graphical improvements over what we saw at Amusement Expo 2017 and improved force feedback based upon user & testing results. I just have not been able to confirm whether or not the game is shipping out to locations yet but it should be very soon (within the remaining month).
Stay tuned for more Daytona Championship USA information, coming soon!
This is similar to Daytona USA 2’s “CAMPAIGN” mode although no arcade I went to ever used it (except for Sega’s own competitions back in 1999 which were linked up to an online scoreboard). Still hoping that the 4-gear shifter option will be the model operators go for, but I’m not holding my breath