Few racing games have quite the same identity as Tokyo Xtreme Racer. Built around late-night battles on Tokyo’s expressways, the series has always had a particular atmosphere to it. Dark roads, glowing city lights, traffic rushing past and that constant temptation to push your car a little harder than you probably should.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer brings that style of highway racing back for a modern audience, putting players behind the wheel on roads based on Tokyo’s real-life expressways. Rather than traditional circuit racing, the focus is on finding rivals out on the highway and challenging them to intense head-to-head battles, all while dealing with traffic and the roads themselves.
There are also the series’ distinctive Wanderers, unique rivals you can encounter and challenge, adding some personality and unpredictability to who you might come across while driving through Tokyo.
Car customisation plays a big part too. Players can build and modify their cars with performance upgrades, gradually turning them into something capable of taking on increasingly difficult rivals. And, honestly, tinkering with the car before heading back onto the expressway is a pretty big part of the appeal.
With Tokyo Xtreme Racer returning to modern platforms, we had the opportunity to sit down with the team and talk about the series, its return, and bringing those late-night Tokyo highway battles back for a new generation of players.
Ben: Hi I’m Ben and here with Kelly from DezDoes.com. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Sato (via Translator): This is Sato, the producer for Tokyo Xtreme Racer.
Ben: Nice to meet you.
Sato (via Translator): Nice to meet you. Thank you.
Kelly: I noticed the controls on the game are smooth. It’s really clean driving. Was that something that you really wanted?
Sato (via Translator): Other games are very racing-focused. For example, the handling controls are kind of like very delicate. One slight twist and you’re off the track. This game, we want kids to be able to play, so it’s more tuned down and you don’t have to race people. You can just kind of cruise along the freeway. It’s a little bit more relaxed kind of driving experience.
Kelly: Cool. Does it allow for driving out into the rest of the street, or is it all just on that sort of freeway network?
Sato (via Translator): This game is called Tokyo Xtreme Racer. The Japanese name is Shuto Kōsoku Battle, which is Tokyo Motorway Racing. The whole entire world is based on this actual track that exists. You can only drive along the designated road. In the future, we’d love to go beyond, you know, but due to financial, budgetary reasons, we can’t. So, if this sell, if this game sells a lot, then, you know, we’d love to put it in.
Ben: The next question was, is it mapped on real streets of Tokyo? That’s great; it’s based on a real motorway.
Kelly: It felt that way.
Sato (via Translator): There’s actually a funny story behind this because, before, these freeways used to be owned by the government. These guys have the commercially copyrighted name of Tokyo Motorway Battle. The government turned the road over to a private entity to manage the freeway. Now that company doesn’t like the name because it kind of almost sounds like you can battle it out on the freeway. So they keep kind of trying to change the name a little bit. But Tokyo Xtreme Racer is probably the name we’ll be going with from now on.
Kelly: When are you looking to release it?
Sato (via Translator): The game’s already out. We have an upcoming big DLC that will add a lot of content to the game, coming out soonish.
Ben: With the racing, you obviously earn points and money, and then you can buy better cars. Is that kind of the process you go through?
Sato (via Translator): In the actual game, it’s what you said, I mean, you race folks, you win, you get more parts, and you kind of unlock more. In this demo, you have a lot of the items already available to you and your cars are actually already kind of juiced up. So it’s just easier to get a feel for it. In the full actual game, you kind of start from the bottom, and need to progress as you win races.
Ben: Like an RPG.
Sato (via Translator): Like an RPG, yeah. There’s no multiplayer racing element?
Ben: No, just solo?
Sato (via Translator): Yeah, this one is just single-player, but we have like over a hundred different NPCs with their own profiles. It’s a little bit kind of like open world, but you’re just driving around and then you meet the next challenger and you can challenge them to race.
Kelly: We saw that when we flashed them with our headlights. That was cool. We could then race. It was cool. I thought they might move out of the road, but they want to race.
Sato (via Translator): This is you just driving on the freeway with others.
Kelly: Whose idea was that?
Sato (via Translator): Well, this game is actually back from the PS2 era, and it was also in arcades, and they made the Steam version like a remake of that game.
Ben: Is Sato the original designer from the PS2 days?
Sato (via Translator): No. At that time I wasn’t involved. I was still in middle school, pretty young. *Laughs* Genki is actually like been around for very, very long. They made Midnight Wangan Racer, they know how to do racing games.
Ben: Awesome. That’s really good.
Kelly: Great game, and welcome to Australia as well.
Sato (via Translator): Thank you.
Ben and Kelly: Thank you very much.
Recent Comments