I came in 1st in all five courses on each of the three track length settings on Normal Difficulty. I broke every record in the game, only needing the unlockable super car to beat the record for the 3rd split of the last course, Desert City, in Time Attack mode. Since I couldn't find online a way to unlock the super car and 2nd horse without using a code, I only was able to unlock the 1st horse via gameplay. Granted, I needed to use the super car to be able to unlock the 1st horse, so I wouldn't even claim I unlocked anything legitimately. I couldn't find any other unlockables online, so I'm guessing the super car and two horses are the only unlockables in the game.
Maybe I've come to need having some sort of season/career mode to really like a sports/racing game since first playing the original Daytona USA back in the late '90s when I bought my Saturn. This might by why I did not like this as much as the first game, even though there are two extra courses and several extra cars to choose from. Without a season/career mode, this basically makes the game turn into one to pick up when you want to simply run a race or two (or however many you're up to) once you get the feel for the tracks. Retaining the time extension convention is something I could have easily done without. Since there seems to be absolutely no downgrade to the cars' performance regardless of how many times you crash, pitting serves no practical purpose other than making your car look unblemished. Unfortunately, the horses don't stop in pit lane.
If you don't have the first game and have the choice of the two, CCE is definitely the better option. However, if you do have the first game, there's really not enough extra in CCE to justify picking it up, unless it's relatively inexpensive.
