I really liked the Evolution games. They were the right blend of quirky and technical for me.

And Tokyo extreme racer games are my favourite racing games, I like the rpg format. Newer racing games have kind of done away with “earning” progression. It’s just given to you, or “lotteried” to you. In the Tokyo extreme racer games, you go out and work for your money bit by bit in one on one races you can currently handle, for as long as your car’s tuning can keep up as it all slowly loosens until you are better off returning home for the night and getting the car back into tip top shape for the next night.

Skill helps alot, and with relatively limited “track” (the highways and ring roads of tokyo), you will quickly have it all memorized and have your favourite stretches picked out. Then it’s all about the feel of the other drivers, they all have stories and their own driving style. You can even sometimes take out a car that should be out of your league by reading their backstory and figuring out a weakness they would have. Like if they have been in an accident on the highway and are terrified of going past 200km/h now and are entirely tuned for short sprints, so you bring them to a long straight and manage to catch up to them before the spirit meter goes entirely their way.

And of course getting to know your own car(s). All the cars felt pretty different, and all the upgrades were very noticeable too. And it was the first racing games that really got me into proper tuning. Gear ratios, suspension, and downforce tweaking were so important, and you had to figure them all out by hand. They changed with every upgrade, and for each section of the highway you planned to tackle that night. They just did such a good job with making it feel like you were a car guy spending literally all-day making sure your car was ready for the night time. And all night making sure you were ready to spend the next day putting on new parts and redoing your tuning so that the next night you could take on a new opponent. Bit by bit, slowly clawing your way up.

And there was of course the whole "gotta collect 'em all style of the way the opponent racers were done. They all had different race/sleep schedules, they had preferences for which direction they preferred to go around the “track” and of course favourite sections. But, if you are in the lead during a race, they will follow you when you bring them to a different section. But yeah, reading back story and systematically taking down all the individual members of a particular club and then racing their boss and getting that boss cash and respect/tuning part unlock… just such a great game, they put so much effort into every aspect.

Tokyo extreme racer games did go to other platforms, but I still feel like they never fully reached the audience they should have. And part of it is probably that there was so much to learn, and that it was just completely different from every other racing game type. If you only put an hour into the game to try it, it wouldn’t have been impressive. It was a slower burn, but very worth it if you gave it your time.

My dreamcast optical drive is dead now. I know they can be repaired/replaced, but I own all the games, so I just been emulating. It’s not “the same”, but it’s good enough that I haven’t felt the need to fix it yet.