Throwback to Tokyo Xtreme Racer Series Part.1 “Drift King Shutokou Battle” in PlayStation
As the official release from Genki Cooperation, it is possibly or partly revealed that the revival project of Tokyo Xtreme Racer (TXR) Series seems to be under construction or preparation. Of course, TXR still composes of my adolescent memory and has enthralled lots of fans of the wide generations. Nevertheless, the latest one on gaming hardware at present was “Tokyo Xtreme Racer X” on Xbox 360 even 10 years ago. Only once at times, the eponymous application “Tokyo Xtreme Racer Xtreme” was released to the mobile phones that was mainly intended for the billing system featuring some parts of its gaming systems and consequent scenario.
For me, there are a host of the memories with TXR, which I could not explained completely in this article. So, I wanna write them down as long as I can reconstruct on the purpose of my rehabilitation for linguistic skills. Unfortunately, I could not touch on some of the “hadn’t-played” series such as “Shutokou Battle R” and “Osaka Wangan Battle” as spin-offs for PlayStation. So, today’s choice is
“Drift King, Shutokou Battle”, which was brought out in 1995.
Supposedly, I thought “Shutokou Battle that was firstly released in DreamCast” was the first contact to the TXR series for many users, which formed the fundamental battle systems and the basis of immovable popularities to the whole series. However, I had played the aforementioned one with the 3D graphic fields that was primally released for the series, when I was the third grade student in an elementary school.
As the subtitle of “Drift King” palpably indicated, Mr. Keiichi Tsuchiya who is one of the the legends in Japanese Motorsports and Mr. Masaaki Bando who currently chairs the representative of GT Association managing Super GT series, thus both of them officially associated with the project as supervisors. Besides, even though some of the basic systems already applied for the several games of TXR, this polygonal one also had, in my impression, some of very unique points in comparison with the other ones.
In the opening movie, Drift King elegantly demonstrated the symbolic drift style with his Nissan Silvia on certain circuit. Moreover, Mr. Masaaki Bando as Oyabun also appeared with Drift King at the pier in some bayside area with Skyline GT-R in the conclusion. The demonstration scene was definitely thrilling for us, even though it was provided almost 20 years ago. Moreover, the movie itself was so valuable to have to be archived with being upconverted to high definition in the next “ulteriorly-announced” project regardless of some difficulties of copyrights or privacy.
Unluckily, the original movie for PS was not sought on the website. Therefore, almost the same edition from Sega Saturn was linked to this article. Thanks so much for Lunchibox360-san who did upload this movie.
When I had watched the movie in my childhood again and again, I could not have identified where the location was. Withal, I just admired his marvelous drift performance similar to Ridge Racer that was very difficult to simulate in actual asphalt surface. After the juvenile moments, I noticed the location was well-known Tsukuba Circuit, which is included the several famous racing games such as GT7. The urbanely elegant and naturally fluent drift performance was so venerable for us. Unfortunately, we could not reproduce the scene on PS because both of the elements were not featured.
Tsukuba Circuit was lately featured in the spin-off product of the series named “Super Technic Challenge Shutokou Battle Gaiden”. Finally, we could simulate the scene.
By the way, the supervisors often appeared in the various chapters from this game. Of course, Mr. Tsuchiya’s appearance, who also often served as an interviewer and a TV personality, was so professional that he acted very well in front of the camera. On the other side, Mr.Bando seemed not to get used to performed but tried to expresse his rigorous and sometimes iconic avuncular character.
Anyway, I want to broach the game itself. My first impression for the game is completely…
“it is so intractable for me to control my car, right?
In the first part of the game, we can select ours from 3 different lineups such as Honda Civic SiR as EG6 model, Toyota Splinter Trueno as AE86 model and Miata MX-3 as Mazda Eunos Road Star in Japan. It was also possible that Nissan Silvia S13 model could be available inaugurally.
So, when we set foot on the game and drove either 3 of the vehicles that we would choose on Gran Turismo as first owned one, it was so surprising that the difference of automatic and manual transmissions were surprisingly featured to the each vehicles that seems to represented the pursuance of reality by the staff.
The tuned-up system is also realistic but very complicated for me as child who was definitely unknowledgeable for mechanism. I often attached some enhanced parts like muffler and tires to my car without any consideration but with my expectation for enhancement. However I upgraded my car more and more, I was often in standstill in the quests due to the lack of speed, because I could not have detect the speed limiter that must be removed firstly in the game. That was a bit painful but good memory for me, hahaha.
Thus, I suspected the staff team idealistically wanted to lay out the semi-driving simulator like Gran Turismo. Unfortunately, it was too early for me to play such a semi-simulation. Or rather, if I had been able to learn the knowledges about vehicles and mechanics through the game, I would have made another lifestyle or the job related to them…hahaha.
One more thing, the drivability of this game was severely sensitive or occasionally peaky. Still, despite the subtitle as Drift King, it was so demanding that we hardly could perform the drift in the game like the opening footage of the legendary Mr.Tsuchiya. Or rather, because I got used to unrealistic drift commands in Ridge Racer, I often hit or even crushed my car on the walls when I made it be slithered. Therefore, I could have had no opportunity to enjoy drifting.
I also had serious challenges with non-drifting style, such as gripped style. The width of the course as the urban highway in the game was courteously wide than the actual highways, which helps us very much. However, the “non-competitive car” often thwarted us unintentionally, which puzzled or sometimes irritated us during the quests. Moreover, when we completed the first stage as novice player, the difficulty of rivals also rose up, which inflicted me so much to clear the mission.
After all, I absolutely dropped out this game after I just had proceeded to the first stage defeating 3 rivals. It was too early but inevitable to get out the game before the completion due to my lack of perseverance. Several years after, I finally noticed from the certain website that the last boss of this game was, as you know, the drift king as Mr. Keiichi Tsuchiya himself driving Honda NSX. It was so regretful for me that I could not ride those exclusive cars in the game and battle with the drift superstar.
In fact, of course Drift King was not the exception, each of the rivals incredibly had actual selfies! It was still uncertain how to choose the pictures or who was chosen as the models. Anyway, the rivals were not illustrations but people themselves. I supposed that they were staffs from Genki Cooperation or they might be the acquaintances of ex-amateur racers or employees from their affiliated shops. They also had nickname, and the female rivals also got appearance. Like Roll-playing game, they had scripts that illustrates their character, which was also featured fatefully in TXR Xtreme as the latest app version.
I can remember the rival named as “IO” who also reappeared in TXR1 as DC version. However, if I had adapted to the drivability of the game, I could have faced with the characteristic rivals, let alone drift king as the last boss.
In my trivial impression, BGM was so attractive. The genres of music ranged variously from Fusion to Rock that reminded me of retrospective feelings in current paradigm. When searching the website for information of them, I accidentally made out the soundtrack was already released. It is so risky to innervate my haptic appetite in spite of my job seeking term…hahaha.
Back to the main topic. Because of the ceacession for the series after the release of Drift King, I passed up to play the spin-offs and sequels such as “Shutokou Battle R” and “Osaka Wangan Battle” until the release of the rebooted one in DreamCast. Actually, I had “quite a little” interest in “R”. Withal, there were a bunch of newly released attractive racing games that were superior to the aforementioned one unfortunately.
However, I finally touched with the “one of my most memorable and impactful games” , you know it is Shutokou Battle. Next article will feature “the inauguration of new era for TXR Series”.
Originally published at https://note.com on April 7, 2024.