Back on the Dreamcast, ‘Metropolis Street Racer’ was the obvious choice for arcade racer fans looking for something to entertain. Alongside this classic, I spent a lot of time playing both of the 'Tokyo Highway Challenge' games. These were pretty simplistic efforts built around the idea that you tune your car, hit the motorway, and flash your headlights at rival street racers to battle them - it was a very addictive race-win-upgrade-race loop.
The sprawling 'Shutokou Battle' series to which they belong, started on the Super Famicom in 1994 and was still going (albeit on Android) in 2017 some 35 entries later.
Less than a third of these games saw release in Europe, so when I found out 'Import Tuner Challenge' was the final console entry in this series, I bought it. It has sat on my shelf for a good while, but now, I'm finally going to play it.
It’s pretty clear that the localisation for this game hasn’t extended much beyond the language switch and the deceptive name. The game is set entirely on the streets of Tokyo, all the character names are Japanese, the cars have their Japanese denominations - and I’m fairly sure that you can’t really call them ‘imports’ when they’re racing in their country of manufacture.
The game starts with you choosing one of the low-cost starter vehicles. I went for the Nissan Fairlady Z33 in ‘Le Mans Sunset’ orange - you might know this car as the 350z. I personally know it as the car my brother-in-law owned before he had to trade it for something big enough to ferry his kids around in; seeing it perfectly replicated on screen, I pretty much had to buy it.
There is a fair bit of difference between the level of detail in the cars and the level of detail to the track. The cars are very shiny, very accurate representations of their real world counterparts, but the game’s setting means you’re almost always racing surrounded by grey concrete and, since you’re limited to racing at ‘Night’, ‘Midnight’, and ‘Daybreak’, it’s always pretty dark. This might sound dull, but it gives the game a fantastic sense of speed. The reflection of the lights streak across your car and the roadside structures, such as the pillars of an underpass, are almost mesmeric in their own brutalist way and will whip past with a familiar thrum.
There aren’t many games that manage to make real world speeds feel fast, but here one hundred miles an hour feels like one hundred miles an hour.
Most races take place in the series’ signature ‘flash your headlights at a rival to start’ manner, with the winner being the first to deplete the others ‘Spirit Points’. This is essentially a health bar that is reduced when you’re behind in the race - the further behind, the quicker the bar diminishes. If you overtake (or get overtaken) but the cars remain bumper-to-bumper the bar will barely move. Blast past and leave the rival for dead, however, and the bar will be eradicated in no time. ‘Spirit Points’ are also lost for impacts with other cars and barriers - so you can be in front and still lose if you pinball around the armco too much.
New to me was the ‘Parking Area’, where you can pick up information about special racer appearance conditions, and challenge some drivers to a ‘Time Attack’ event which, contrary to its name, is actually first-past-post over a set course.
With the real-world highway courses, and the limitations thereof, there isn’t really a lot of opportunity to win with player skill and racecraft. ‘Import Tuner Challenge’ is, as the Dreamcast titles in the series were, an example of what I like to call the ‘CarPG’ genre. By this I mean that although the player still has to drive around the courses competently, the majority of the success comes from performance improvements made to the car by levelling up - the ‘Gran Turismo’ series is the best known example of this sub-genre.
‘Levelling up’, in this case, not only includes all the usual engine, suspension, and drive chain tweaks, but also allows you to adorn your chosen ride with all manner of hideous wings, wheels, stickers, and vinyls. This is essentially a boy-racer simulator after all, so covering your mum’s Honda Civic with plastic shark-fins and parts suppliers’ decals is all indicative of the scene. An additional really neat touch in all this is that you are given a ‘Handle’ by the other racers and it evolves with your style as the game goes on. I started as “Kobe Greenhorn” having chosen that particular city for my number plate at the start and, having gone through a number of iterations, I’m currently known as the “Bullet Noble”... for some reason.
All in all this is Shutoko as I remember. There’s only really one downside so far, but it has the potential to be a big one: I’ve not lost a race yet.
There are literally hundreds of rivals to beat and I’ve only raced a tiny fraction of them, but up until now the AI for the opponents has been particularly averse to sharp turns, which you are almost certain to encounter every race, so you only need to navigate these points faster than they do and you’re home free.
With that said. I did play this happily for several hours. There’s a real addictive hook to cruising the streets and upgrading the car - but there’s no way to know how long this will remain the case or if the challenge will increase in future races.
The sprawling 'Shutokou Battle' series to which they belong, started on the Super Famicom in 1994 and was still going (albeit on Android) in 2017 some 35 entries later.
Less than a third of these games saw release in Europe, so when I found out 'Import Tuner Challenge' was the final console entry in this series, I bought it. It has sat on my shelf for a good while, but now, I'm finally going to play it.
It’s pretty clear that the localisation for this game hasn’t extended much beyond the language switch and the deceptive name. The game is set entirely on the streets of Tokyo, all the character names are Japanese, the cars have their Japanese denominations - and I’m fairly sure that you can’t really call them ‘imports’ when they’re racing in their country of manufacture.
The game starts with you choosing one of the low-cost starter vehicles. I went for the Nissan Fairlady Z33 in ‘Le Mans Sunset’ orange - you might know this car as the 350z. I personally know it as the car my brother-in-law owned before he had to trade it for something big enough to ferry his kids around in; seeing it perfectly replicated on screen, I pretty much had to buy it.
There is a fair bit of difference between the level of detail in the cars and the level of detail to the track. The cars are very shiny, very accurate representations of their real world counterparts, but the game’s setting means you’re almost always racing surrounded by grey concrete and, since you’re limited to racing at ‘Night’, ‘Midnight’, and ‘Daybreak’, it’s always pretty dark. This might sound dull, but it gives the game a fantastic sense of speed. The reflection of the lights streak across your car and the roadside structures, such as the pillars of an underpass, are almost mesmeric in their own brutalist way and will whip past with a familiar thrum.
There aren’t many games that manage to make real world speeds feel fast, but here one hundred miles an hour feels like one hundred miles an hour.
Most races take place in the series’ signature ‘flash your headlights at a rival to start’ manner, with the winner being the first to deplete the others ‘Spirit Points’. This is essentially a health bar that is reduced when you’re behind in the race - the further behind, the quicker the bar diminishes. If you overtake (or get overtaken) but the cars remain bumper-to-bumper the bar will barely move. Blast past and leave the rival for dead, however, and the bar will be eradicated in no time. ‘Spirit Points’ are also lost for impacts with other cars and barriers - so you can be in front and still lose if you pinball around the armco too much.
New to me was the ‘Parking Area’, where you can pick up information about special racer appearance conditions, and challenge some drivers to a ‘Time Attack’ event which, contrary to its name, is actually first-past-post over a set course.
With the real-world highway courses, and the limitations thereof, there isn’t really a lot of opportunity to win with player skill and racecraft. ‘Import Tuner Challenge’ is, as the Dreamcast titles in the series were, an example of what I like to call the ‘CarPG’ genre. By this I mean that although the player still has to drive around the courses competently, the majority of the success comes from performance improvements made to the car by levelling up - the ‘Gran Turismo’ series is the best known example of this sub-genre.
‘Levelling up’, in this case, not only includes all the usual engine, suspension, and drive chain tweaks, but also allows you to adorn your chosen ride with all manner of hideous wings, wheels, stickers, and vinyls. This is essentially a boy-racer simulator after all, so covering your mum’s Honda Civic with plastic shark-fins and parts suppliers’ decals is all indicative of the scene. An additional really neat touch in all this is that you are given a ‘Handle’ by the other racers and it evolves with your style as the game goes on. I started as “Kobe Greenhorn” having chosen that particular city for my number plate at the start and, having gone through a number of iterations, I’m currently known as the “Bullet Noble”... for some reason.
All in all this is Shutoko as I remember. There’s only really one downside so far, but it has the potential to be a big one: I’ve not lost a race yet.
There are literally hundreds of rivals to beat and I’ve only raced a tiny fraction of them, but up until now the AI for the opponents has been particularly averse to sharp turns, which you are almost certain to encounter every race, so you only need to navigate these points faster than they do and you’re home free.
With that said. I did play this happily for several hours. There’s a real addictive hook to cruising the streets and upgrading the car - but there’s no way to know how long this will remain the case or if the challenge will increase in future races.
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