In love with: Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025)

It’s very odd to attempt to review a game like Tokyo Xtreme Racer, released in 2025 after a year in early access, as it feels both too simple and too complicated to explain in modern day game market. Because, it’s a game about street racing, where you battle other cars on a section of the Shuto Expressway to see who’s fastest and… that’s really it. The mechanics are simple and they don’t really change across the entirety of the game that can easily take over 20 hours or more. The rule of the “battles” are also dead simple. And most of it has not been changed drastically, it seems, since the original Shutokō Battle on Dreamcast came out in 1999 that was localized in United States as Tokyo Xtreme Racer. In a way, it’s a game from a bygone era. And yet, that’s the best thing possible.

I have only heard of Genki until recently, the Tokyo based game development studio who did a few different genres over the years, but have been mostly known for these kinds of street racing games. I’ve not played any prior racing titles from them and my own introduction to the idea of street racing, didn’t happen interactively until the idea blew up “in the west” with releases such as Need for Speed: Underground or Midnight Club II. The original Midnight Club was directly inspired by the Japanese street racing scene which has been active since the 1980s, and it seems like that whole concept of “wangan” culture, street racers on the highways going at insane speeds, was very inspiring for the team at Genki, as they’ve spent so many years trying to recreate their own excitement about the racing in an interactive form with their games.

And I think that’s really what sells this newest Tokyo Xtreme Racer – as mentioned, it’s not too varied, really. And yet even I, who is not into cars all that much, felt inspired because of all the atmosphere the game is trying to build. It’s very much a “mood game”. There’s a story that, apparently, is following up on the older titles, with characters you can talk to when parking at different parking spots or after specific story events. It’s not deep or complicated, it’s just about a huge collection of car nerds who want to go fast, getting together on those streets to do just that. They are office workers, otaku, stay at home moms, arrogant macho dudes, chemists… All types of people. Who felt the urge to go real fast. And it genuinely works and builds a world you get to care about on a certain level.

But really, it is extremely simple. You get a wide selection of cars, you can upgrade them and tune them, can put some visual changes and stuff. And then you go on the Shutokou and drive around. When you see any other racer (all of them are shown on the mini-map), you flash your lights at them at the battle starts. Both you and your rival get “Spirit points” (health bar, basically), that deplete when their owner lags behind too far or hits something on the road. The first one to run out of SP loses. And that’s it. There are a few twists to this formula occasionally, but that’s what you will be doing for hours. There’s no super convenient fast travel (and the one that there is can only be unlocked much later), so you’re supposed to drive around, battle, soak in the atmosphere and when you feel like you’re done for the in-game night, go back to the garage, tune stuff, purchase new things, and then go back again to start another night. You might get new people, some, especially the non-story related “wanderers” have special requirements before they appear, but it’s a bit of a routine, after a while. But one that genuinely works. Despite not having all of the variety of something like NFS: Underground 2 which had all the different events, photo shoots and whatever else, Tokyo Xtreme Racer feels LESS boring and more… honest about what it is. And if it clicks with you, it clicks really well.

Now, it has to be noted that I’ve decided to play on an easier difficulty, the main difference of which is that unlocks are not limited by story and while I enjoyed it, it is quite easy to just buy very high end stuff too early and completely destroy your opponents, which is less fun, I feel. So keep that in mind when you start a new game. And also, while the game works really well through its repetition and moody driving around at high speeds to awesome tunes, it does get repetitive at certain points. For one, while great, the selection of music tracks is very limited (it also seems like a lot of them are new arrangements of tracks from older games). For another, when the game requires you to battle certain people and then does story events, it can get into the rather frustrating cycle of starting a night, having one battle, getting a cutscene that automatically dumps you back at the garage, so you have to start another night, get another single battle with a boss and get another cutscene that returns you back into garage again. Plus, to get the true ending, so to speak, which I didn’t get, you need to get all wanderers and because of the nuances in their requirements, this whole process of going in and out of the main map until you get the correct conditions becomes especially frustrating.

In the end, though, boy is it a fun experience. I can’t believe, there is a way to do an “open world racing” without it being a tedious task list and it turns out, the solution is to just design it as if you were designing a racing game in the early 2000s instead of whatever that annoying mess Forza Horizon or modern Need for Speed are, where games feel like MMOs with daily quests more than racing games. This title feels pure in its racing desires, despite the structure of the world. And it’s extremely fun, so I hope more developers take note of Tokyo Xtreme Racer.