Theme - Cruis'n USA (Arcade)

Cyril: With the invent of optical media and large cartridges, developers were suddenly able to load their games with high quality music featuring real musical equipment. Before we knew it, the industry was inundated with big hair and guitar solos. This Cruis'n USA theme demonstrates that it is possible to fit a funky bass line and butt rock singing into a crappy racing game. Musically, this isn't the train wreck my score suggests. Sure it's a little goofy and the drummer isn't given much to work with, that's keeping in spirit with this cheesy arcade racer. Where it loses me is in the vocals. I'm impressed that you can play the drums and keyboards, but why didn't anybody think to write some lyrics? Moaning "yeah" and "whoa" may work if you're Lady Gaga, but not when you're trying to get me to spend a dollar to play a mediocre driving game!

Kevin: This theme song has one very big problem: A vocalist with absolutely nothing to say. It's as if they brought him into the studio to sing out the title, and then he just kept making noise. Even worse, they forgot to cut that noise! This would have been a perfectly inoffensive, funky theme if not for this guy. Is there a reason he had to say 'whoa' so many times? Perhaps someone just thought the exceedingly brief funk loop needed help dragging out for so long. The actual music behind the nuisance is just one short, cheesy riff repeating over and over. It's not bad, but it's not memorable. The irritating singer manages to make the theme memorable, but certainly not in a good way. If his part had ended after the short build up beginning the song, this would have been passable.