

The game was first ported to the Sega Saturn in Japan (on April 1, 1995), North America (on as a launch title), and Europe (on Jas a launch title). While it is based on stock car racing (and is sponsored by the International Speedway Corporation), it does not contain any sponsorship (including cars and drivers) from the National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR), which hosts the stock car racing events at Daytona. The game later received multiple ports for the Sega Saturn and Windows PCs, along with two full-fledged sequels ( Daytona USA 2 and Daytona Championship USA), an enhanced Sega Dreamcast port, a high-definition arcade port (as Sega Racing Classic), and a high-definition digitally-released port for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Arcade operators can link up machines for multiplayer (with up to eight racers at once) and multiple versions of the cabinet exist (including one-player "upright", two-player "twin", and one-player "deluxe").

Button system also returns, allowing players to choose from four different camera angles at any time. Similar to Virtua Racing, the game features three courses of varying difficulty and, while not allowing multiple car choices, allows two transmission choices (Automatic and 4-Speed Manual). It's also notable for its vocal game soundtrack, composed by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. It builds on the studio's earlier Virtua Racing with filtered, texture-mapped polygons (one of the first games to do so), giving a more realistic appearance at a high framerate. The first title to debut on the Sega Model 2 arcade system, Daytona USA is loosely based on stock car races in the Daytona International Speedway (notably the Daytona 500). Daytona USA is a 3D stock-car racing game developed by Sega-AM2 and released by Sega for arcades (using their Sega Model 2 hardware) on August 1993 (exclusively in Japan) and March 1994 (worldwide).
