COIN UP: CRUISER

The Concept

Cruiser is a love letter to the sprite-scaling racers of the arcade era: a pseudo-3D road, a screaming engine, a clock that never quite has enough seconds on it. Pick a car, pick a Grand Prix, and beat five checkpoints per stage before the timer runs dry — full throttle banks time, traffic costs it.

Every route is real. The track shapes — every corner, every climb — are distilled from actual geodata: Big Sur, the AVUS, Trollstigen, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, all compressed into five-minute arcade form and identical on every run, so times are comparable.

• 4 Grand Prix — USA, Germany, Nordics, Europe
• 60 stages on branching maps: forks decide your route
• Risky takeovers — thread the needle at full speed for bonus points
• Chase mode — outrun the law, or be the law
• Turbo & traffic — more cars, higher score multiplier
• Online leaderboards — a global top 10 per Grand Prix, fed live from the game
• Your own soundtrack — point the game at a music folder, picked right from the options
• Secret cheat codes — five of them. Finding them is half the fun (high scores sit this one out)
• Runs on your phone — Android build with on-screen controls, same sixty stages
• LAN duels, touch controls, CRT / 16-BIT / DOT MATRIX display filters
• All original pixel art and chiptune soundtrack

Downloads

• Browser — play right here, nothing to install (no online leaderboard in the browser version)
• Windows 64-bit — Cruiser_Win64.zip, unzip and run
• Linux 64-bit — AppImage: one file, no installer. Make it executable once (chmod +x Cruiser_Linux_x64.AppImage) and start it. On Ubuntu 24.04 and newer, AppImages need the older FUSE library (sudo apt install libfuse2t64) — or start it without FUSE: ./Cruiser_Linux_x64.AppImage --appimage-extract-and-run
• macOS — app.zip, unsigned: the Apple Developer enrolment is still under review, so there is no certificate yet and macOS refuses the first launch. Three steps, once:
  1. Unzip and drag the app into Applications.
  2. Double-click it. macOS blocks it — expected. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, press Open Anyway and confirm. (Older macOS: right-click the app, choose Open.)
  3. If it claims the app is damaged, the download flag is the culprit — in Terminal:
     xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Coin Up: Cruiser.app"
  Nothing is wrong with the app: unsigned simply means macOS cannot verify who built it.
• Android — APK for 64-bit ARM devices (any reasonably recent phone or tablet). Not from the Play Store, so your phone will ask you to allow installing from this source, and Play Protect may warn about an unknown developer — that is expected for a direct download. On-screen touch controls appear automatically.

The Grand Prix

USA GRAND PRIX

15 stages · Coral Beach → Cape Light

Sun, surf and desert mesas. The classic coast-to-canyon tour that started it all - from Big Sur pavement to the neon glow of the strip.

GERMANY GRAND PRIX

15 stages · Hamburg → Muenchen

Autobahn history and city silhouettes: AVUS straights, the Kesselberg switchbacks and five skylines you will recognise at speed.

NORDICS GRAND PRIX

15 stages · Oeresund → Reykjavik

Bridges, fjords and midnight light. Cross the Oeresund, climb Trollstigen and chase the horizon all the way to Reykjavik.

EUROPE GRAND PRIX

15 stages · Amsterdam → Gibraltar

The grand tour: fifteen stages from Amsterdam to the Rock of Gibraltar, over the Grossglockner High Alpine Road and down to the Mediterranean.

Under the Oeresund

The Nordics opener dives under the strait for its final stretch: headlights on, light bands overhead, daylight waiting at the far end.

Every Run Ends at the Diner

Roll off the road, park up, check the tally. Average speed per stage, points, and a date next to your high score.