X Marks the Followup

This is a sequel post to the previous ‘Price of Power’ entry. I’ve spent a decent amount of time on Shutokou Battle X now and feel the need to comment on what I’ve discovered, and how it contrasts with what I expected.

To review briefly: after picking up an Xbox 360 I knew at some point I was going to have to buy and play Shutokou Battle X. It is my go-to racing series, and no matter what differences arise between installments I always have a pretty good time. Not too long ago I was dismayed somewhat by how much luster has worn off Shutokou Battle 2 for the Dreamcast, but it was still a good game.

The Price of Power ‘blog entry was my attempt to lament the drop in game content as graphic sophistication has increased. To make my point I chose two game series that crossed from previous console generations to the current one, the Earth Defense Force series and the Shutokou Battle games. The current chapter of EDF I’ve played through and was the impetus for writing the post. The section on Shutokou Battle was more anticipatory based on what news, information and rumors I could glean from the internet. So how did this latest Shutokou Battle actually stack up? Did the gutting of the content to fuel the graphics work to the detriment of the game? Did it move the meter away from substance and over to style?

The answer: Yes. But not as much as I thought it would.

Shutokou Battle X (Import Tuner Challenge in the USA) being the latest installment in Genki’s venerable franchise, had a huge foundation on which to build this game. The series has been on almost every platform since its inception, and Genki has had countless opportunities to tweak the mechanics, car physics, car selection, interface, complexity, graphics, and everything else. Like any developer making a sequel, especially as part of a franchise, Genki, has a fine line to walk between offering something new and different enough (from their own previous games AND other games) to warrant a purchase while not alienating long time fans who expect some mechanics and traditions to be maintained. Every Sonic game, every Gran Turismo installment, almost all of series, tread this narrow, perilous path. Occasionally enough time passes to where a developer feels that an intellectual property’s (IP) can be radically changed while still having a name that will be a sales draw. See the new 3d Bionic Commando or the upcoming Splatterhouse. Significant reboots of franchises are rather rare. Successful significant reboots are an order more rare still.

(Dedicated) gamers are picky fuckers. On the one hand they want innovation… they don’t just want the same old retread games. On the other, they break out the torches and pitchforks when developers go TOO far from what they perceive are the core mechanics (or narrative, or graphics, etc) that made the franchise beloved in the first place. Fans often deride developers and publishers for their lack of ability in seeing what made the good chapters in a franchise… well, good. But it really isn’t as easy as just ‘leaving the good shit in and adding some more good shit’. Who decides what is good shit? What aspect of the old game was THE good part? At what point is adding a new character a great idea, and when is it just lame? Like movie studios, game developers often seem to think MORE is the same as better… and who can blame them really when that so often seems to be what the audience responds to. The syndrome that Tim Burton’s Batman film series fell prey to? Hell, yes.

Genki didn’t reinvent the wheel (so to speak) with SBX. And I didn’t really expect them to. Shutokou Battle games are all pretty much the same game. Same mechanics, same plot (such as it is), same tracks (mostly), same opponents (mostly), same progression, etc etc. Fans of these games don’t play each installment religiously because they are always hungry for radical innovations. They play them because driving through traffic on Tokyo’s highways is really fun, but also each game’s backstory, rivals, and cars build on the previous chapters. Every new chapter does also feature just a bit of tweaking to the driving model to emphasize something different to go with the increase in detail and realism in the graphics that you’d expect. The likeness to actually being on the expressways gets closer and closer to the real thing. The updates have the latest car models to add to the game world.

I’ve likened the series (and all of Genki’s racing games) to role-playing games. The actual play features have a lot in common with RPGs; the hunting for opponents, the battles, the money earned, getting items (auto parts), affording better weapons (cars). But there’s also a history woven through the individual games, which affords the player as they spend the time necessary, a sense of very simple narrative progress complete with characters that grow, change, or drop out as time moves on across the series.

In Shutokou Battle X, the driving ‘feel’ has been made more forgiving. It is typical for Genki games to be characterized as having slippery or ‘floaty’ handling, but this really only applies to early or unmodified cars. In real life a low-power or stock car is not as difficult to keep on the road as this game indicates, but that is because the poor handling is an abstraction. It is designed to a) symbolize crappiness in both car and driver, ie ‘making you be crappy’, and b) give the modifications a serious effect. In real-world driving if you upgrade your suspension by small increments; maybe stiffer springs first, then stiffer dampeners, then bigger sway or anti-roll bars, then upgrade everything to a coilover system, then a racing-heavy four-corner adjustable coilover system. You will notice improvements but they may be subtle or only noticeable in the most extreme track situations. In a Genki racer they need every mod to make a demonstrable difference. So in effect, they start you off a little more difficult or ‘worse’ than real life, in order to encourage you to mod as soon as possible and then reward you when you do so with tangible results. The floaty handling usually manifests itself in the fact that you have to make lots of small adjustments constantly while driving, as if the car has a bit of a mind of its own. You have to constantly feed inputs to the controller to get it to go exactly where you want, a combination of steering being a bit loose or unstable and tires that don’t hold the road or give you a proper feel for when they are about to break traction. In the old Dreamcast chapter, Shutokou Battle 2, the game never completely dropped the tire feedback problem. In SBX the floaty feel seems minimal, only manifesting itself to me (and I may just be really used to these games by now) driving down straights when the instability of the steering has me making small adjustments to keep it heading correctly… rather like the tires needed balancing. Once you improve the tires and suspension, even by one increment, the floatiness goes away. This is a fairly big change from the old days where you had to buy the upgrades, adjust and test a lot, then fiddle with the sensitivity controls for the game itself. Continual upgrades, adjusting, and fiddling continue to improve the handling as always, but you can banish the trademark Genki floatiness almost right away.

Another difference in this game is how it handles breaking traction. Various installments have waffled back and forth as to how important or useful drifting is. In real life drifting is more useful in touge (mountain road) racing, or as a show and competition form on a formal track. It is not really used in highway racing which is more akin to driving on a circuit with its well-paved roads and less drastic elevation changes. Drifting would also be death used in highway traffic. Touge uses spotters to make sure the road is clear… doable on the short twisty sections out in the country. Can’t do that on urban expressways. So highway battling typically takes its corners in the slow-in/fast-out philosophy of grip racing. Being a driving fantasy, Shutokou Battle games try to incorporate drift… making it more important as drifting has gained popularity (as a competition) in real life. In earlier chapters, your car just broke loose and careened into a wall if you tried to drift. It was possible to get this under control, but it was almost in spite of the game, not because of it. With the PS2 iterations and the rise in drifting’s popularity, this changed, though still not allowed with the same alacrity as the companion series Kaido Battle. In SBX, losing traction (accidentally or on purpose) in a stock car will cause a weird, sudden slide that just as suddenly ends when enough speed is scrubbed off. It is jerky and unpredictable, much like the way the Ridge Racer games handle the same phenomenon. It was REALLY off-putting at first, because I have always hated Ridge Racers sliding. But much like the floatiness, this detriment can be quickly dialed down. And once you learn to expect it, it can be controlled right handily. I don’t think it is realistic… odd they didn’t just use the drift mechanics from the Kaido Battle series… but it does put the option to drift controllably as a firm, planned cornering option into the expressway battles.

Some other things: glancing off cars or barriers are rather like Shutokou Battle 3 on the PS2—some speed loss and a hit to your SP bar, but recoverable in all but the closest battles. A direct hit into traffic causes a really weird, almost slo-mo hit to the traffic car. The effect is roughly the same as all other Shutokou Battle games, but it FEELS like it is costing you a ton of time because of the perceived slowdown. I’m not sure if it actually does cost you more time… I don’t think so… and I’m not sure if this was intentional on Genki’s part; maybe done to make the player really hate crashing and really try to avoid it. Your car is also larger than its apparent shape, meaning you will hit traffic and opponents by just getting really close to them, rather than literally touching them. Driven properly this isn’t much of an issue, because:

This game is really REALLY easy.

Given the power of your modifications and the new more forgiving driving model, this game presents the least challenge of any Shutokou Battle game I’ve ever played. I finished the game handily in a JZA80 Supra that was still three upgrades away from the maximum allowable engine size. Supras are known for having overbuilt engines that can handle monstrous amounts of horsepower, but I didn’t have to get anywhere near those titan levels to romp through all the final bosses of the game.

And you know what? That lack of difficulty was okay, frankly. I have enough games on my plate that require scadloads of practice or effort to progress in microscopic increments (Mushihimesama Futari anyone?). This was really enjoyable to drive and race just for the pleasure of it.

The new versions of the cities are really beautiful. Lots of detail, and animation. A couple of new offramps added that lead to an entirely different kind of racing for this series, with very hard-angled corners. New rivals, new bosses, and everyone seems to have gotten a graphic overhaul for their stickers, the rivals’ team or nickname emblems.

Okay, so the game was fun… more fun than expected considering the rumored losses. Losses that turned out to be true, but had little effect on my fun with the game. What were the losses exchanged for the improvements?

Drastic downsizing of the car list. There are only about two dozen car models in the game. That is a major drop from the hundred or more that was typical in earlier chapters. There are a few more makes and models amongst your opponents than you can get yourself, but besides limiting your options, this really increases the repetition amongst your opponents. Many teams have members that all drive the same car. Many bosses have had their traditional car changed. It was quite disconcerting to see some historic rivals like the Death Driver and The Emperor have such radically different rides. The number of cosmetic upgrades (aero parts, vinyls, etc) help this somewhat. But at the end of the day, this was probably the single biggest hit to my pleasure in the game. It was a groaner to think to myself ‘oh another team entirely made up of Evos’ over and over again. One of the big attractions to Genki Racing Project games is the immersion factor, and that has always been helped considerably by the number of different car types (multiplied by the possibilities in modifications) you could encounter. It has seemed like no two cars were alike, like real life. And there have always been plenty of oddball or weird cars thrown in like vans, utility trucks, muscle cars, or maybe a Corvette Z06… all unexpected in the racing environment of Japan. None of that in SBX.

Downsizing of the highway map. They dropped the Wangan and Yokohane expressways, the epicenter of flat-out drag racing in these games. These areas had to be opened up in the previous games by progressing… and offered a stark contrast to the tighter corner-based racing of the games’ initial C1 tracks. This could’ve been as big a drag as the loss of cars except Genki added the two aforementioned offramps which themselves have some fairly long drag-able straights. Genki also took a cue from the Kaido Battle series and started putting parking areas into the game. Parking areas are the social heart of Japan’s racing scene. At key offramps around the expressway system, the racers, teams, hangers-on, groupies, and just plain car nuts gather around and talk, compare vehicles or just loiter. Music is blaring, challenges are made or refused, a lot of snacks and drinks are bought out of the area vending machines. This adds a lot to SBX, giving new forms of interaction, and new places you have to go to find your rivals.

Traffic is a lot more sparse. This is probably in keeping with making the game a bit easier and more accessible, though I’d say Genki’s inexperience with optimizing the graphics comes into play and they needed to minimize slowdown… of which there still is some in instances where many cars are onscreen, the developer’s traditional weakness in this area.

That’s really it for the minuses. Less cars, less track, less traffic. The first two are definitely ‘content’. The game isn’t literally shorter than other iterations in terms of rivals and number of races to run, but it is really obvious that there is less variety. As I said, this bothered me less than I thought it would because, and I don’t want to sound like a graphics whore, the game is just so much prettier and realistic. And my mind was taken off the shortcomings by having the two side road areas and new rivals to master.

As if time has continued its march in the Genki world, so some old teams have disappeared, new teams have arisen and the player has to find his place in the scheme of things… usually at the top when all is said and done. There were some pretty cool things to this part of it. There is a selection of bosses that have been recurrent through the games usually called the Thirteen Devils. For this game, they are kind of in semi-retirement and a new group, the Phantom Nine, have come to prominence. Upon beating the Phantom Nine you, of course, catch the attention of the remnants of the Thirteen Devils. This is all handled with cool intro videos and music.

It is as fun as ever to knock these rivals on their asses and once again assume the mantle of King.

Note: I played the japanese version of this game. One wanderer rival, Green Wild Child, has a different requirement than what is indicated in the USA version (Import Tuner Challenge). His Japanese requirements are the same as they are in SB3 on the Playstation 2, a license plate edit.

The Price of Power

Chikyuu Boueigun 2

Chikyuu Boueigun 3

In the world of film, there is a continual discussion of sorts as to whether visuals can make a movie, a movie quite apart from the sort of art film where the imagery IS the story or the language of the story. I’m talking about the ‘it was all special effects and no story’ versus ‘it was a great popcorn movie’ debate. More serious film buffs (read that ‘hardcore’, I guess) universally appreciate good special effects and visuals but don’t hinge their enjoyment on them. They are quite happy with modest or even broken effects if other aspects of the film are engaging. Casual viewers may not know, care, or have enough experience to see past the whizzing ships, and roaring dinosaurs to find out a movie blows.

There is an analogous video game debate. The graphically awesome/fucked up gameplay discussion. Usually the issue of who puts a lot of stock in graphics divides down between hardcore and casual (see a later entry for my opinon on this schism, a real can of worms) fans the same way it does with movies. Harcore fans appreciate amazing visuals but don't require them to give a game a chance.

The point of this entry is two games and their respective developers, smaller houses with limited budgets, who had to drop content in order to ramp up the graphics. I’m specifically picking two franchises with very similar games in both the current generation of consoles and the previous generation so there's no question of comparing apples to oranges. They are so similar in fact, that they would better be considered remakes than sequels. But what was gained and what was lost in the remaking?

The Chikyuu Boueigun 3. Over in Japan, the ‘Simple Series’ is a long-running string of games that are budget priced and usually feature uncomplicated gameplay or graphics. They don’t cost much because they don’t have a lot of cash plunked into development. They don’t qualify in the opinion of some marketing department as full-priced games. But they were worth making… or something like that. So there’s a lot of simple puzzle games, or cheapish-looking fighters in the series, but overall it is diverse. Occasionally there’s a breakout title where everything just comes together in spite of the low budget to produce a game that could easily run with the big dogs. The Chikyuu Boueigun is probably the most well-known example… though well-known is kind of overstating things, its still a very niche/cult game. Oneechanbara (Bikini Samura Squad in the USA) is another. The first two volumes of Chikyuu Boueigun were published for the PS2. They got releases in Europe as Monster Attack and Earth Defence Force (yes, with a ‘c’ in ‘defense’) for each chapter respectively. The third installment was released for the Xbox 360 not long after the console first came out. The western title released in Europe and also in the USA was called Earth Defense Force 2017.

As would be expected in a so-called ‘simple’ title, the premise and gameplay are pretty straightforward. You are a member of an elite science/military organization bent on eliminating an alien threat. The version this particular science fiction action staple takes is pretty much lifted whole from all the Ultraman tokusatu shows…where some form of ‘science patrol’ is the human defense against aliens and giant monsters. In these shows they have cool vehicles, and lots of beyond-present-day weapons technology. See also the more recent Godzilla films for the inspiration behind the military chatter and squad tactics. Godzilla Final Wars in particular lends a lot of its aesthetic to the Xbox 360 game—the alien ships in the film are dead ringers. While running around fighting kaiju (giant monsters) and aliens (even in a tank or plane) would usually be suicide (see almost any Godzilla movie) Final Wars equipped its foot soldiers with wicked enough guns to actually take the fight to the monsters and stand a chance. Chikyuu Boueigun gives you THOSE guns.

So you are an 'infantryman' (you can drive a tank, hoverbike, helicopter or walker, but I don’t recommend it typically) with a couple of big-ass weapons blowing the hell out of the aliens and their minions in all three games. That’s all you do. Blow up all the giant bugs, robots, ships, kaiju, flyers, and motherships. There is variety in tactics and terrain, but essentially your job, no matter the mission, is to kill every living thing not natural to this earth. And it is really gosh-damn fun. Repetitive to a degree, but so well done it is hard not to get engrossed. The missions move along quickly, and you cannot employ exactly the same approach, or use the same weapons to get through all of them. As you progress through the game you will get better, more powerful weapons as the enemies get stronger, faster, and more numerous. The viewpoint is third-person, and there is a little reticle in the center of the screen showing where your onscreen self is pointing. The action rarely slows down until the screen is just clogged with enemies, their fire, and explosions.

I’ve not had the opportunity to place the first episode, but my understanding is that the second episode basically retreads the same ground but with a lot of improvements. That's what the hop from second to third game was supposed to do as well.

I have a lot of play time in on Chikyuu Boueigun 2. A remake would have to be pretty badass to top that game. Seeing the trailers for said remake, one could tell the play specifics were pretty much the same… and that the graphics were amazing! Trailers can, of course, be misleading, but what was shown was really encouraging. If you’d played the PS2 one you knew what you were in for… only bigger and more shiny!

Alas, all was not as hoped. The trailers concentrated on the images that were absolutely awesome—the newly designed alien ships and walkers, and the new monster. These things are pretty intricate and have a new red-glow-and-chrome scheme quite different from the 50’s B-movie aliens from episode 2. A new aesthetic for the Xbox/PS3 generation, sure. Once you actually play the game though, it is pretty apparent the new chrome aliens are where almost all the money went. The rest of the game looks pretty much like the PS2 chapter, apart from better resolving textures and buildings that collapse with a few more polygons. The ants and spiders, the most common enemies, are almost exactly the same. I wasn’t really expecting the polygon count to go through the roof. There are tons of enemies and shit on the screen at once and I can understand simplifying the objects as much as possible to keep the speed up… it was kind of a miracle that the PS2 was even playable at times, though it stuttered like a fat man at a strip club during the most hectic moments. Generally the game does look better. It feels like there’s more variety and detail in the Xbox version and it doesn’t really matter that the game is more crude in places than the trailer let on, if the gameplay is up to snuff.

I didn’t really play the PS2 version using the second available character, the girl with the flight pack, Pale Wing. That’s not even an option in Chikyuu Boeigun 3. She got cut… or replaced with the big bulky (and nearly useless) walker vehicle, depending on how you look at it. The flying ants/wasps also got cut. Now THAT is a drag. The missions in the Xbox 360 game are largely the same as chapter 2, but one of my favorite levels in the earlier game was the one in which the ants had constructed a large hive, rising up out of the ground in the middle of a city that towered over everything around it. Seen in the hazy distance when you first start the mission, you almost can’t believe it… the scale of it. Complete with tiny (from so far away) flying ants circling the upper reaches, and wingless ants crawling up and down the sides. Simply awesome. And your job is to bring that huge bastard down! Xbox 360? No flying ants as I said, and no hive.

The newer game also short shrifts the kaiju in my opinion. In the PS2 game you had a regular-sized dinosaur-ish monster early in the game. Later you fight two little ones and when they die, in the same mission their mother, a beast much MUCH bigger (and spinier-looking, not just a resized object), comes out full of wrath to feed you your delicates. In the new game, you get a level with one 'improved' dinosaur-ish kaiju, then later a level with two of the same. And finally you get a level with one that is the same size, but was upgraded by teh aliens by chopping off its arms and attaching two mega-guns. There's no surprise and no drama to that compared to the first game. The Xbox one has a great sense of scale, as in what it actually shows you... but a lot of the awe is lost. The PS2 one had a great habit of letting you think you've settled in and seen the limit and then hitting you with something even more awesome to throw you for a loop. I have rarely said 'holy shit!' while playing this game. I said that a lot on the PS2 version... and it isn't just because the earlier chapter has me numb and jaded. The Xbox 360 one just doesn't REACH like the PS2 one did. With the little alien ships, the Chikyuu Boueigun 3 has two types, chrome ones and the much sturdier red ones. But they are just 'pallet swaps' really. Same ship two different colors. In Chikyuu Boueigun 2 the harder ships were actually a different design.

The money or time or motivation just wasn't into putting more into other elements apart from the graphics. The game has less, sometimes glaringly so. I don't know if these things were actually CUT, like the elements were planned and then dropped as opposed to never considered. I suspect they WERE dropped. Why wouldn't you have at least the same amount of variety if you could?

They wanted to get the game out early in the Xbox 360's shelf life, maybe because they knew the unsophisticated graphic elements, such as there are, would wear less well as time went on, but this game plays great (and uniquely) and the graphics are the least of your concerns during most of the game, when you are trying to run away and destroy hundreds of enemies at the same time. Looking beyond the polish of those shiny ships, the PS2 version just has more GAME to it, and for me, is the definitive version up to this point. I hope the Xbox 360 version sold well enough for there to be a number four that will improve this game in the same way I understand episode two upgraded the first game.

Shutokou Battle X. Another Xbox 360 'improvement on an older game'. Genki has been making Shutokou Battle (Tokyo Xtreme Racer in the USA) games for ages. See earlier posts about my ongoing love affair with the series. Just about every game console has seen a version of Shutokou Battle. Most more than one. I have most of these, though my collection goes back only as far as the PS1/Saturn era. Apparently there were NES or SNES ones as well. At any rate, the usual pattern for Genki seems to follow getting a new Shutokou Battle game out soon after a console launches, and then make an improved episode later in the console's life. The improvements can be quite radical. The differences between the two Dreamcast episodes or the two PS2 episodes are extreme. The Xbox 360 version in the US lacks the Tokyo Xtreme moniker and goes by the name Import Tuner Challenge.

I don't need to go into quite as much detail about this franchise as I did the Chikyuu Boueigun above. I have not yet bought the Xbox iteration, but I already know from 'net info and trailers what the issue for me will be. Dropped cars.

It almost doesn't matter how whiz-bang the graphics are. Shutokou Battle has never had the slickest visuals in a racer. They would normally be best described as serviceable. And what they usually provide in service is speed. The cars and environments aren't as pretty as the Gran Turismos and Forzas but they have a way more exhilirating sense of tearing down the streets. The games are immersive because of the atmosphere, real-world locations, and rival system, and the graphics are good enough to keep you into the experience. So graphically the Xbox 360 chapter should be the best yet... the bits of it I 've seen certainly live up to that. Even if the visuals aren't the most important aspect, if a system can render more realistic images while keeping the speed up, that can only be a good thing, yeah? Icing on the gameplay cake.

Another aspect the Shutokou Battle games are known for is variety. The DO rival some of the big franchises for sheer number of cars, and outdo most of them for customisation options. Early chapters not so much, though they had quite a few for their day... but the later Dreamcast chapter and the PS2 episodes had well over a hundred car models available.

Is the Xbox 360 version you get less than twenty.

WTF?

This doesn't just have a dampening effect on what you drive. Typically in a Shutokou Battle game ALL the car models of the rivals eventually become available to drive. If the game only has eighteen or so car models TOTAL how much variety can you possible give to the hundreds of rivals in the game? One of the series selling points is the 'real-life' variety of all your opponents. This will cut the variety down to a fraction of its former glory. How many rivals will be driving the same car... I don't care how many aftermarket parts they have to choose from. Ugh.

I think... rather I HOPE.. this is just the typical Genki thing of first game on a console being relatively weak, later game being the real deal. That happened on the PS1, the Dreamcast and the PS2. The later games for each console were monumental improvements. Trouble is, its been a long time since Shutokou Battle X came out, and I don't think there is a sequel on the horizon.

Being a Shutokou Battle completist I'm going to get Shutokou Battle X. But this may be the first time in my life I'll be playing one of these games with an arms-folded attitude of 'impress me motherfucker'. Something's going to have to be impressive to make up for the loss. If it does surprise me somehow, I'll post it and apologise for doubting.

I AM The Legend, Baby!

Wow. I just started to really get into playing Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 (Kaido Battle: Touge no Densetsu)... and this is just a kickass game.

I know I need to get over my frustration with Blazing Lazers and just finish the damn thing, but it'll be hard while I've got this one going on. Drift 2 is not a new game in terms of release date, and I actually bought the Japanese version quite some time ago, but by the time I was ready to play it, news of the English one was out, so I waited. I got into Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix and then got stuck trying to find all the 'wanderer' character cars in THAT game when I bought the English Drift 2.

So blah blah blah, long time 'til I started this game that I should've started (and finished) a long time ago. This game just reminds me of why I love GOOD video games (or books or movies)-- immersion. And I pretty much go through this every time I start a new Genki racing game. These games are not well-loved by the critics. They are very kvlt, especially in English-speaking countries, most players totally dismissing them as not enough of a simulation, or not up to Gran Turismo or Forza graphic levels. Or having 'skatey' controls. Missing the point of the games one and all.

Genki games have COLOR. Gran Turismo is pretty, and realistic (for a medium that can't actually grant you the physical feedback of being in a real car), but has shite for driver AI and is the driest, most plot-bare game world you can imagine. The other end of the spectrum is the Pro Race Driver series and they are perhaps TOO story-oriented, tracking you pretty linearly through an adventure game-style plot, but with cars instead of guns or items, and races instead of fights. Games from the Genki Racing Project have a world. Opponents with names, identities, and driving styles. They communicate with you. You have to go find them sometimes... or wait when they get off work, or when they agree with the weather. The controls are slippery in some sense, but nothing I've found that is particularly difficult to get used to, and it actually enhances what upgrading your car will do for you. If you want your car to control just like it would in some other racing game, some effort and the right parts and settings will get it there. And it usually doesn't take very long. Genki racers aren't about grueling your way through 500 of the same goshdamn race for peanuts at a time. There is some repetition, but you get different styles of course, variable weather, different victory conditions AND a staggering number of individual opponents. The game has a constant flow of goals for you to reach. Not just 'man I gotta win this race 61 more times and I can get that Skyline R34'. You are always in a state of wanting to see what comes next, whether it is a new track to be unlocked, a new gang of drivers to defeat, or just wanting to get on the ingame BBS to read the trash talk or cries of defeat from your rivals. Reading what defeated drivers say to you when you walk up to them at a later date in Drift 2 is worth the price of admission, re: 'You spanked me so bad last time, I don't even want to talk to you, yo.' or 'It's the drift god! I'm not worthy!'.

The best entertainment experiences are about immersion. This whole world in each Genki game comes at the cost of the most detailed cars or most realistic physics. It is a compromise or a balance. I don't know if I'd characterise these as arcade racers so much as sort of 'idealised'. While the controls may seem odd at first, you can adjust so much (including your controller's sensitivity typically), that once you get used to it, the number of cars, parts, tracks, track conditions and all of that put it squarely back into 'simulating' what it would be like to be a highway or mountain pass street racer. If someone is a fan of Initial D or another racing manga getting these games is like dropping yourself into the comics. Especially the Kaido Battle games, since those are based in the mountain passes like Takumi's adventures. And of course Genki includes all sorts of nods to Initial D.

I've recently joined up with a message board for fans of Genki racing games. I guess there are just enough of us to create an online goober space. I'm inspired to find those last few wanderers in Racing Battle, and maybe someone at that forum can help me.

Currently On My Plate

So I've been playing STGs (2D shooting games) almost exclusively lately. I like other genres but I've been in kind of a mood (rut) the last six weeks or so. Two months from now, I could be totally immersed in fighting or driving games. I am getting something of a hankering to tackle Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 (the US version of Kaido Battle Touge no Densetsu), but I keep putting it off because I have not quite finished (100% completion) Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix and I don't like to have too many of the same sort of game 'open' at the same time, if that makes sense. I already have Need For Speed: Most Wanted and an iteration of Burnout still waiting for me to complete as well. So actually that makes three racing games on my plate.

I was working through GT4 at one point, but y'know? I just find the Gran Turismo games to be 'too big'. They are great for what they are... but what they are is also just endless. They are simulations-- lots of realism, no drama. They have the some of the best physics, but no wrecks, no damage, no story, and no real opponent AI. So to get through the entire Gran Turismo experience (in all the chapters) is about endless racing in very pretty cars through very pretty scenery but absolutely no emotional content apart from just digging the cars. I find that some kind of competition really makes my motivation to get through this sort of game. Even a game somewhat thin on the human drama like LeMans 24 hours is more interesting to me. THAT game wasn't quite as big (so as not to seem so endless) and had more of a focused goal, even if one of the things you had to finish was a real-time 24 hour endurance race, amongst all the other races. I liked that game so much that I've played all the way through two different consoles' versions though the difference between the two was miniscule... only a couple of new/different cars. It doesn't hurt that I'm a huge sports car racing fan though.

Ever since Need For Speed went 'import tuner' with the Underground chapters, I started playing them. I finished Underground 1 and 2 in pretty much no time flat. Then got into Most Wanted, and pretty got hung up on cop evasion issues. I'm at 69% completion but the level the cops pursue now gets so much in the way of the actual racing that it is frustrating. I like the idea of the cops involvement but they just throw so much at you so quickly... and a large part of completing the game is involved in very un-racing behavior-- wrecking stuff, hitting cop cars, ad nauseum. So much of it isn't a real racing game, kind of the point of playing a RACING game. Complicating things is the fact that doing well at it requires a lot of memorisation of the city layout, and the more time I spend away from the game the more time I'm going to have to spend re-learning what is where when I do pick it up again. A lot of the same could be said for Burnout (Revenge I think). Good game, awesome wrecks. BUT. Racing is only part of the overall play. It has a lot of non-racing you have to do. And to top it all off I was at 89% complete and my game save got corrupted. That's just discouraging. In my head I want to start over and try again, but my heart just isn't in it. I'm hoping to let enough time go by before restarting so that the game will seem somewhat fresh, but as time goes by there' always that next newer, cooler game... including new chapters of Burnout, of course. I probably won't be a completist and try to do a lot more Underground or Burnout chapters. I played through the DS version of Need For Speed Carbon and it was just okay. I think the only racing game company or series that ritually holds my interest is probably anything by Genki Racing Project. That'll be the Kaido Battle, Racing Battle, and Shutokou Battle games.

Like any car game, racing in Genki games gets repetitive. The Underground games (which are from Electronic Arts, not Genki) tried to get around this by really mixing up the race types. They have drag races, circuit races, street races, drift competitions, etc. all aimed at giving you a varied experience and keeping your interest in the long career modes. And of course they want to cover all the types of racing that can appeal to import car fans. Apart from Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix, Genki games don't really have that many different types of racing in each game. But what they do have is drama of a sort. They have characters, even gangs of racers for you to compete against, all with their own customised cars, driving styles, and in the later games, messages. There are even 'bosses' to defeat to get to the next level. There's a whole immersion factor here that most racing game makers just don't reach. The Underground games give you a whole city to roam around in and 'find' your races. That helps it feel like you are in a lifelike environment, really strutting your car around in a city. But Shutokou Battle did that first. From a pretty early point in the series you could literally drive around the Tokyo freeway complex looking for opponents, and because the streets had real counterparts, it added a dimension of 'you are there' that other racing games just don't have (to me). Genki driving games are all still like this. I love the games so much, a few times the release of one has tipped me into buying a new console earlier than I otherwise would have. I think Import Tuner Challenge, which is Shutokou Battle for the Xbox 360 is probably the only one I don't have, and the reason for THAT is a different, longer story that involves the high price of the console AND my indecision over whether to spring for a US or Japan version machine. I'll discuss my feelings about the Xbox in a near-future rant about region lockouts or the state of video gaming in America.

Its hard to explain the Shutokou/Kaido/Racing Battle to other gamers. Genki racing games are kind of a cult thing. A lot of driving game fans play them and just don't see what makes them so great. Its like being a fan of STGs, which are generally 2D, have somewhat old-school graphics most of the time, and a play mechanic that is based on one of the oldest video games known (Space Invaders or more correctly Galaxian). How can you explain to the modern gamer the badassedness of an STG when they are ducking for cover from 1000-polygon missiles in surround sound in the latest FPS, or trying to put one over on another dozen gamers in the massive multiplayer online RPG du jour?

You either get it or you don't. Age probably makes a difference. While newer-generation gamers ARE getting turned on to some of the cult genres, most of the hardcore seem to be old enough to have some firsthand experience of the time when the genre in question ruled the arcades. Genki racing, though not specifically arcade based (Wangan Midnight aside). They don't have the spiffiest graphics (though they aren't bad either). Their driving physics tend to 'arcade-style' as opposed to GT's more simulation-style.... though not as arcade-y as Underground. But they are just more exciting I think. Sometimes you really get some rivalries going-- just as in some more human character-based games. There'll be that one diver (often a boss) who is just a pain, and its just awesome when you squeeze out a victory over them. And the rivalries and feelings can carry over into other games. I remember seeing a boss in Shutokou Battle Zero who I'd met and raced in previous chapters, and if he had given me trouble it was like, 'okay man, let's see what you've got in your new car', because frequently the characters will upgrade between games, 'I will still leave you sucking my exhaust.'. Most racing games with a career mode (and that would be almost all of 'em) have a sort of RPG-aspect to them. You go along in your career and as you conquer opponents you get cash and can buy upgrades to your car, analagous to a character in an RPG, who defeats enemies, gets gold and buys better equipment. I guess for me, Genki racers just do this better because they put faces (or rather car stickers) and names to all your rivals, even having some come looking for you when you defeat their rivals or friends.

So yeah. I really should be getting back to finishing my racing games. As I said, I've only got a few characters left to beat for 100% completion in Racing Battle, but getting those last few to appear has been difficult. Difficult enough for me to put THAT game aside for awhile too. Racing Battle is one of the few Genki racing games that has not gotten an english version and so it is much harder to figure out and fulfill the conditions required to make all the rivals available if you don't read japanese.

On the shooter front:
I made a giant jump in progress in Lords of Thunder. Probably would've beaten it by giving it another go, but I had other stuff I had to do so conquering must wait. The game, according to internet information isn't actually that hard, but it took me awhile to come to grips it, as I posted in another 'blog entry. I did fit in completing Gleylancer though. This is an odd-duck little shooter. Great option system (options being the generic term for the little side pods that are power ups in many shooting games), and your hit box is pretty forgiving-- smaller than it might appear from the size of your ship. But the art style is strangely primitive, just sort of utilitarian with some enemy designs just sort of slapped together. Some of the choices in backgrounds are weird too. The colors chosen and the scrolling speed make some of the enemies and their bullets really difficult to see. This is mostly a game-breaking problem in the first level, so once you get past that, the visibility goes way up most of the the rest of the game. But it is still a strange game. It was fun, but compared to contemporaries like Thunder Force 3 or Gates of Thunder it is no classic. Can't complain though. You can get it for pretty cheap as a download on the Wii Virtual Console and it was an rare-ish import-only title.

There's a lot of neat little import titles appearing on the Wii shop channel. I have always been an import maniac through all the consoles I've owned, but even I couldn't find or afford all the titles I'd have liked. This service gives me a second chance. I downloaded Cho Aniki awhile back and that game was a hilarous good time. I see Gradius Gofer no Yabou on there, and when I get into a Gradius mood, I'm sure I'll get that one too.

STGs are a great pick up and play game genre. They generally only take a half hour or less to complete (Treasure mega-epics aside) if you are expert enough to get all the way through. Even if you aren't a couple good runs that get you part way to the end can be really fun (or you can credit feed to the end, but that cuts their replay value way down). The graphics may be old-school (2D) but they are often spectacular, with pulse-pounding music to go along. And their difficulty (optimistically read 'challenge') is something not often found in more modern gaming genres. Shooters are kind of the archetypical 'boss fight' genre. In short, they're kind of a potent gaming 'shot'. Good stuff for adults that just can't sit down for hours at a stretch or who may be away from their consoles for long periods and don't want to have to figure out where they left off. They also lend themselves to being a good one-player experience.

Current STGs playing: Thunder Force VI, Lords of Thunder, Mushihimesama, and Border Down.