Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA is a 1998 arcade racer for the Nintendo 64. You drive fast cars across US cities, hit huge ramps, and catch air that no real car ever could. It is the second game in Midway's Rush series, and the air time is the whole point.
Here is what you actually do. You pick a car, pick a track based on a US city or region, and race. The cars feel floaty on purpose. Tap a ramp at speed and you launch way up, spin in the air, and pray you land on your wheels. Crash and you respawn fast. Most tracks hide shortcuts and secret jumps, so the fun is half racing, half finding the line that sends you flying. There is a separate stunt mode built just for showing off in the air, and a two-player split-screen mode for couch racing.
It runs only on the Nintendo 64. There was no PC or PlayStation version of this exact game, so to play it now you either dig out an old cart and console or run it through N64 emulation. Atari Games built it and Midway published it in North America on November 11, 1998. GT Interactive handled the PAL release in early 1999. Mountain Dew cans are scattered through the tracks as collectibles that unlock extra content, which is about as 1998 as a game gets.
Is it worth playing in 2026? If you want a clean, simulation-style racer, no. If you want a loud, ridiculous arcade racer that does not care about realism, yes. Reviews back then were mixed-to-positive. GameRankings landed around 78 percent. IGN gave it 8.9 and called the racing fun even if the menus felt cheesy and recycled from the first game. GameSpot was much harsher at 5.1, mostly on presentation and feel. Next Generation called it "a worthy successor to the original." So critics split, but the split was about polish, not whether the driving was a good time.
The community angle is the interesting part. Years later, players who grew up with it talk about Rush 2 like a cult favorite. On the N64 subreddit, fans swap stories about mastering the stunt track and argue it holds up better than most first-gen N64 racers. A 2025 ResetEra thread literally called it "one of the best arcade racers of all time." That kind of long memory is why the name still pops up in searches: not a new release, just a classic that keeps getting rediscovered by people chasing that big-jump feeling modern racers rarely give you.
One thing to keep straight. There are unrelated games floating around with "Rush 2" in the name, including Roblox titles and other arcade racers. This page is about the Nintendo 64 game from 1998. If you searched for a current Roblox experience or a brand-new racer, this is not that one.