The arcade version was critically and commercially successful, drawing favorable comparisons to Sega's Daytona USA.

In early 1994, Nintendo signed a licensing agreement with WMS Industries, Midway's parent company, which allowed Midway to release two arcade games advertised as the first version of Ultra 64 hardware and formed a joint venture named "Williams/Nintendo" to port those two games to its consoles.

Along with Killer Instinct, created by Rare, the arcade original was showcased at the June 1994 Consumer Electronics Show as running on Ultra 64 branded arcade hardware, sharing the branding of Nintendo's upcoming home console, codenamed Ultra 64.

[6] The Cruis'n USA cabinet shown at the Consumer Electronics Show was actually running on a modified JAMMA board.

[citation needed] The San Diego division of Williams Entertainment, Leland Interactive Media,[5] the developers of the Nintendo 64 version, had to downgrade most of the arcade graphics to accommodate home console hardware.

[9] Several elements of the game, such as the ability to run over animals and depictions of Bill and Hillary Clinton on a hot tub, were censored from the Nintendo 64 version.

[30] 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).

[21] 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.

"[22] 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.

"[38] Reviewing the Virtual Console release in Nintendo Life, Damien McFerran echoed many of the original criticisms about jerky frame rate, poor collision detection, and lack of speed and excitement, and said that even the arcade original is a fairly poor game.