Tokyo Xtreme Racer
Taking inspiration from PS2-era racers, Tokyo Xtreme Racer is a fast-paced, high-octane arcade racer taking players to the highways of Tokyo.
Gear up for an arcade racer where you take on other drivers to become the number #1 street racer in Tokyo. Image copyright, © Genki
If you miss the simpler times of arcade racers from the PlayStation 2 era, then you’ll be pleased to know that particular style of games is making a comeback. Lately, there hasn’t really been to many mainstream racing titles that focus on pure, simplistic fun. While the Gran Turismo series has kept things relatively grounded, and the Forza Horizon series has been blending the realism of the Motorsport series with arcade-style racing, there hasn’t been much focus on good, solid arcade racing. This is where Tokyo Xtreme Racer comes in. It feels like EA has long since given up on making a new entry into the Burnout franchise and Rockstar’s Midnight Club has been forgone in favour of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, so it’s small wonder why it feels like the arcade-racing genre is on life support.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer aims to revitalize things, and so far, fans of the genre have been pretty receptive to the game Genki Co., Ltd. are building. And I’m happy to say that I’m one of them. I dabbled in all manner of games on my PS2 when I was younger, including some racing games like Need For Speed: Underground 2. While I didn’t really appreciate racing games when I was a teen because I hated losing, I did love Underground 2. And that’s the kind of experience I felt after booting up Tokyo Xtreme Racer for the first time.
After selecting your first car from the three options presented, it’s time to dive in. Image copyright, © Genki
Tokyo Xtreme Racer is an arcade racing game set in many racing fans’ dream of a near future Tokyo. Drawing inspiration from the street racing set on the Shuto Expressway in Japan’s Greater Tokyo Area, players compete against powerful AI drivers to try and become the best racer on the Shuto. No one wants to be the worst racer in a racing game, that’s no fun, but how the player goes about this is what makes the game so addictive. Giving players access to dozens of real cars to choose from and customize to their own liking, and take to the carefully crafted race courses, Tokyo Xtreme Racer keeps the idea of fast-paced, frenetic fun in mind throughout.
Not knowing a whole lot about cars, I went with the above car that caught my eye from the available choices, a Mazda Roadster RS ‘15. I like the design compared to the others, and when I made my choice, I was shown through some text-based tutorials and tips, and finally set loose onto the Shuto Expressway as a novice racer. Now, what I said earlier still applies. I don’t like to lose. But overall, even when I lost a race in Tokyo Xtreme Racer, it never felt unfair. The few times I did lose races were more of an inherent power gap between vehicles, more than a lack of skill. And while there were times when simple luck or bad timing caused a very quick loss, I was eager to challenge the racer again to correct my mistake.
Head-to-head races against other drivers are the key to Tokyo Xtreme Racer’s gameplay. I did not have this many credits in my playthrough, this screenshot is courtesy of the developers. Image copyright, © Genki
Loading into the Shuto Expressway course from any number of different starting points, the idea is to find racers to challenge, drive up behind them, and initiate an SP Battle race. Usually, this results in you being behind the other driver as the race starts, but that never lasts too long. The idea of the SP Battle (Spirit Point Battle) race is that both racers drive as fast as they can to deplete their opponent’s SP bar, which appears on the top of the screen, while taking care not to let their own SP bar hit zero. The idea is to get as far ahead of your opponent as possible as quickly as possible. While that’s the general idea of a race, the SP bar depletes in other ways if you’re not careful. Speed is obviously important, but crashing, grinding your car against walls and other cars, and even careless driving at top speeds can all lead to sapping your own SP bar first.
It’s fun to win a race with only a sliver of your bar remaining, but it’s also disheartening to come from behind in a race and take the lead from your opponent only to have victory snatched from you because you ended up drifting a little too hard and are now trading paint with the scenery and watch the last of your SP bar disappear. Lightning-quick reflexes and knowing when to make your move are just as important as speed, and that’s what makes Tokyo Xtreme Racer so much fun. An interesting aspect is that when you win around 5 races (maybe more, depending on your opponents), you’ll stumble across Team Leaders who will drive up behind you and challenge you to a race for beating their team members. This usually comes after you’ve finished a race, so be wary in letting your guard down if you’ve noticed a trend with the racers you’ve already beaten.
Get too cocky and defeat too many racers in a team and the team leader will have something to say about it. Image copyright, © Genki
There’s still a lot I want to cover for Tokyo Xtreme Racer, so I’ll be expanding upon my thoughts in a review for it at some point. I want to thank the team at Genki Co., Ltd. for providing me with some of their own images to pair with the screenshots I took from my own playthrough, and for making such a fun racer to begin with. I played just over 4 hours of Tokyo Xtreme Racer, mostly playing on my Steam Deck while on breaks at work. It performs extremely well, and if you want a game where you can easily drop in for a few minutes at a time, this might be worth considering.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer is currently available in Early Access on Steam, where it sits at a Very Positive rating with over 10,000 reviews. Genki has extended the Early Access period until the end of September of this year to further fine-tune the game based on player feedback, but for anyone looking for a fun arcade racer, I recommend taking the risk and picking it up now. I will be coming back to the game over time and will have my own review ready to coincide with the game’s full launch. But until then, Have You Heard Of This?
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