As happy as I am that the arcade game received a home port, and even got a physical release, a lot of the game's elements can be described with one word:
Meaningless.
To sum it up:
- The game has a good amount of vehicles to unlock and choose from, but they all behave exactly the same. No matter if it's a Nissan GT-R, a truck, a double-decker bus from the streets of London, a UFO, a unicorn or a tank, it has the exact same acceleration, top speed, handling, and so on. The different levels of these the game tells the vehicles have, is a flat-out lie, they don't matter. The different vehicles are basically just different skins to the one vehicle the game has.
- Levelling the vehicles up makes no difference to their capabilities, and buying the additional stuff for them (neon lights, better body and engine) are also visual-only effects.
- This makes collecting money and keys for buying/unlocking different vehicles and upgrading them functionally pointless, unless you want to have that vehicle that look likes a hammerhead shark and put neon lights on it purely for the ridiculousness factor.
- The stunts (wheelies, helicoptering, driving on two wheels, etc) are pointless. Peforming them does give a bit of bonus money at the end of a race, but it's a small amount and money is basically worthless anyway. Doing them can only have a detrimental effect on your vehicle's speed, if, for example, you do a wheelie before a jump then your vehicle keeps spinning vertically, and if you land on your roof then it takes a moment before the vehicle corrects itself. I never found any actual use for these, only that it's better to never do them.
- The surface you're driving on doesn't alter the handling in any way. Asphalt, dirt, glass, molten lava - it's all the same.
- Likewise, the setpieces are visual-only. Doesn't matter if the course has UFOs attacking, dinosaurs running over the road or helicopters shooting missiles at you, they're purely visual themes that have no effect on gameplay.
What really drives this home is that the courses themselves are railroading you constantly. Even if it looks like you should be able to drive off the course, there's an invisible wall there to keep you in place. Even in the air, you can't go outside the course no matter what.
Secondly, the non-NPC vehicle events on the courses are tied to the player. They only exist, and behave, in relation to the player. Like those dinosaurs, there are many cases where some dinosaurs run across the road. But if you slow down, they slow down as well. Their animations are tied to the player's location on the course. This leads to some hilarious things, like in another course there's a tanker truck that rolls over and its cargo flips through the air. If you slow down while this is happening, the cargo's flipping animation also slows down and it just hangs in the air, waiting until you proceed so it can then dramatically smash down at the exact moment it's supposed to.
This is also why the game doesn't allow you to look backwards, or even turn around, because it would mess this whole thing up.
As a port, Cruis'n Blast is quite excellent. The Switch version has added content, it runs at 60 FPS (with some small, but noticeable, jitters if there's a lot of action on screen), has four-player local multiplayer, and it looks and sound great. But there's not much actual game in there. And since it is technically a racing game and people will treat is as such, I'm sad that it's one of those arcade racing games that makes many people think all arcade racing games are just simple, flashy, brainless driving games.
Even on Switch there are far better options for solid arcade racing games with actual meat on their bones. Inertial Drift, Burnout Paradise, Riptide GP: Renegade and the two Rush Rally titles, off the top of my head. They have much more substance and soul, even if they lack most or all of the shiny things that Cruis'n Blast has. On the other hand, Cruis'n Blast could be tons of fun in multiplayer, especially with kids. The back of the box even says "Race, Drift and Bash with 4 friends for the ultimate party race game!"
So, there it is, the game itself even says so. Treat it as a party game, the same way as Wii Sports or something, and it has its place. But anything beyond that and it falls flat.