After reading the new content, guides, etc, I thought I would share some additional information from when I researched the game myself a few years ago, as well as a couple other things. The following is an unstructured dump of information that may be worth adding into the big guide and other places. Most of this is assuming the highest vehicle upgrade, and generally with use of the Jeep, unless stated otherwise:

-La Bomba accelerates the fastest, although has slower top speed than many other vehicles. For Chicago IL runs, it was actually better than the Muscle Car due to this, although it became irrelevant after 4-3-4 was discovered. I don't think it serves any use now.

-The Muscle Car is the fastest on-road vehicle and should probably be used for the 2 player trick instead of the Jeep unless I'm missing something.

-I would highly recommend learning to play in first person view since you have a much better view of what's in front of you, which is critical for taking perfect lines. I believe it may also help reduce lag since you see less around you without loading anything extra up ahead.

-When you drive off-road continuously for 20 seconds, the game immediately places you back onto the road (I called these "warps"). They're useful for a few ILs because it helps move you closer to where you're going. This is done on US 101, LA Freeway, and Iowa. Likewise, there are some courses where I intentionally drive back onto the road for a frame or more to cancel out a warp.

-Some objects such as trees, signs, etc are not actual objects and merely sprites that you can drive straight through. Most are in fact objects though and there's no particular pattern on which are which. However, it does not vary run by run and they're always the same. Essentially, you just need to learn which are actual objects and which aren't.

-That said, solid objects can still be driven through with no speed loss if you're immediately in front of it and then past it on the following frame. This is not technically random, but very precise, and I always treated it as a fortunate accident instead of something I intentionally went for.

-The first two levels of the Jeep ("C class" and "B class") are not faster off-road, but they do lose less top speed compared to other vehicles.

-There is never traffic on the right-hand side for 2-player races.

-Traffic tends to appear in patterns, but there is some variance to it, likely from your pace, but possibly also from actual randomness. Which vehicle the traffic appears as seems to always be randomized though and some luck is required on some levels. In particular, Appalachia's best lines requires driving head-on through traffic, and Washington ideally needs smaller vehicles in a few spots in order to squeeze by.

-Playing on easy difficulty or higher for US 101 is optimal so that you can cut through to the right-side off-road faster. The other racers get in the way on the easiest difficulty.

-You can tell which difficulty a player is playing on based on the starting timer (75 for beginner, 70 for easy, etc).

-The timer is simply a frame counter and always ends in 0, 3, or 7. It's not like Mario Kart or other games that calculate additional distance to get a more precise value.

-Regarding soft and hard turning, your lines are generally more important. My method of turning softly was to gently and repeatedly tap the controller stick, rather than a gentle hold.

-As mentioned in the guide, scoring a top 10 time for RTA is detrimental, unless you either fill it up with insane IL times or cut out the difference. I personally think IGT is much more user-friendly, despite not knowing your progress as you play. As you get better though, your IL times should vary less and less, and I generally knew my overall pace without needing to write anything down.

-If you match one of your top 10 times and use the same initials, the time will duplicate itself on there. For example, if you achieve your second 1:30:00, there may appear three instead of just two due to a glitch.

-Always play with maxed out steering or else you can't make the hardest turns.

-Turning is capped, that is, pushing your stick all the way left or right, even with cruise control won't allow you to turn any better.

-When bouncing off a curb or uneven ground, your current speed and direction may lock for a couple seconds. This can be both useful and detrimental, depending on how fast you're going and where you're going.

-Driving downhill and uphill does actually increase and decrease your speeds. Pressing on the controller stick up or down does nothing though.

-The game has lots of invisible walls along the sides and have no pattern as to where they are. They need to simply be learned where they are.

-The best splits are per controller pak, so if you combine various ways in playing the game, they won't necessarily be accurate as to what you're doing. I always just used relative values because of this, for example, if I'm X behind my pak's best split, that means I'm Y behind relative to what I'm actually doing.

-ASB is significantly advantaged on PAL due to a lower frame-rate and essentially playing in slow motion.

-ASB can't accelerate you into infinity and seems to cap around 338 kph. Check out this TAS for a video and more information:

-I recommend playing with metric instead of imperial because it provides a wider range of values so you can get a more precise idea of how fast you're going.

-Here's an image of my control setup in case anyone wants suggestions (note that I never played with 2 controllers):

-I spent a good deal of time optimizing the IL lines and times, and I think they're pretty solid. Where to drive is complicated with the off-road being faster, but I've tested lot of different paths. My times are still fairly improvable, but they're all pretty strong. The weakest I would say is Redwood Forest.

-Using the highest upgrade of Jeep (in 2 player) for "NG" seems silly to me since "NG" should imply a fresh save file. While it is nice to be able to compete under various different metrics, competition also gets more diluted when very few players are playing under the same rules. It's not my call to make, but I'd suggest unifying the rules a lot more.

"-Using the highest upgrade of Jeep (in 2 player) for "NG" seems silly to me since "NG" should imply a fresh save file."

• I'm on that too but i do give shoutouts when some actually goes through that with 2 controllers.

I think you're misunderstanding my viewpoint regarding that. My point regarding NG is not a matter of mechanics or what the player is allowing to be used, but more on the principle on the definition of "New Game". While your main vehicle you control is a fresh file, it's benefiting from a file that is not. There's no need to bring up anything personal as I have not played NG or am personally interested. (Though I did briefly play a couple ILs to help a player set some target times). There's no need at all to worry about my personal opinion on the matter, I just thought it was worth bringing up.

I'm not one to discourage players from doing all they can to improve times in any way they can and I likewise use what's available to me. Certainly not "terrified" of players beating my times :P ; I have always been very open and helpful to those interested and encouraging people to compete to the best of their abilities. Otherwise I would have not shared everything I've found about the game or attempted to build interest.

Category definitions are certainly important as is for most speedrunning games, but as I mentioned previously, it is a very gray area and extremely subjective on building a ruleset, hence why it has changed a few times over already. A player could similarly be even more restrictive than my personal opinion and not allow 4-3-4 or what have you. I haven't brought this up to spite you and I think it's great that you've achieved your sub 20 goal! The timing is coincidental since I had just realized my times were posted on here as mentioned in the other thread.

I fully understand your side of the discussion and as mentioned, I'm just stating my opinion, so don't worry about it or give it any weight. I just personally view "NG" being fresh out of the box, but I understand others disagree. Many other speedrun communities likewise don't follow that perspective, such as Banjo-Kazooie which uses FFM to start a fresh file with all the skills, or Pokemon that resets the game repeatedly before selecting "new game" to affect RNG favourably. Cruis'n USA appears to be another community taking the same perspective which is of course up to the community to decide what they want to allow. People sharing their personal opinions even without intention or expectation to change anything still has value or otherwise Cruis'n USA as it currently stands wouldn't have arrived at where it is today, as with all sorts of other subjective categories, such as 100% in Ocarina of Time, etc.

As mentioned regardless of any rulesets or weight put into my opinion or any other factors, I haven't played NG and am not too personally interested. Perhaps I'll dabble in it if I pick up the game if only to help set some standards for ILs when I have extra free time in the future. I'm pretty confident dual-wielding controllers wouldn't be an issue as I've done so in other games before and as mentioned, have no issue with the required learning involved. On a similar note, I would actually argue strongly in favour of the benefits of playing in first-person view, despite some learning that may be involved in that.

Hey everyone, idk if this was made explicitly clear but make sure to voice your opinions in discord and vote there, you have about 30 hours to do so. (posting this for people who don't travel to discord that often)