deluxe arcade game in November 1994, and Play Meter listed the title to be the second most-popular arcade game in December 1994. It was one of America's top five best-selling arcade video games of 1994, receiving a Diamond Award from the American Amusement Machine Association (AMAA). It went on to be America's highest-grossing dedicated arcade cabinet of 1995. Next Generation reviewed the arcade version of the game; while viewing the game as graphically less impressive than its rivals, they praised other aspects that could rival games like Out Run from Sega. The Nintendo 64 version met with mostly negative reviews, and earned a GameRankings score of 50.63% based on 16 reviews. Reviews widely criticized the jerky frame rate, poor collision detection, and music, which they said to be both stylistically inappropriate and poorly composed. Next Generation concluded that "this half-hearted, rough-shod conversion is exactly what Nintendo 64 doesn't need". GameSpots Jeff Gerstmann and GamePros Air Hendrix had more mixed reactions than most. Gerstmann praised the controls when using the Nintendo 64 controller's analog stick, but concluded the game to be a major disappointment. Air Hendrix, while heavily criticizing elements like the pop-up in the two-player mode and lack of variety in general, said it is essentially a faithful conversion of the arcade game and worth trying out as a rental, though not an outright purchase. Peer Schneider of IGN and Kraig Kujawa of Electronic Gaming Monthly both said the two-player split-screen mode is the highlight of the game, while noting that the frame rate problems are even worse in this mode. Kujawa's co-reviewer Dean Hager said the game "certainly fails to show off the processing power of the N64", and Shneider said it lacked excitement and was "probably doomed to be the nadir of N64 racing games for many years to come." Despite the negative reviews, the Nintendo 64 version of Cruis'n USA saw strong sales, thanks largely to a combination of the console's popularity and the small library of games available for it at the time. It was the sixth best-selling video game of the 1996 Christmas shopping season according to TRST data, with three of the five higher-selling games also being Nintendo 64 games. By the end of 1997 it had sold over a million copies. In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the arcade version 63rd on its "Top 100 Video Games." Reviewing the Virtual Console release in Nintendo