Tokyo Xtreme Racer Review – Return of the Old-School

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The classic style of fast-paced, arcade racing games has largely disappeared over time. While games like the Forza Horizon series offer similar experiences, they lean more towards realistic simulation. Fortunately, several smaller game developers are filling the void left by larger companies who have let franchises like Burnout and Need for Speed fade. Tokyo Xtreme Racer, the newest release from Genki, aims to recapture the feel of those original PlayStation and PS2 arcade racers.

Let me be clear: Tokyo Xtreme Racer isn’t a completely new game. It’s actually a return of a franchise that started way back in the 1990s, with the original appearing on the Super NES. The series went quiet after Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Drift 2 on the PS2 in 2005, and has been largely forgotten for nearly twenty years, but now it’s back.

The Shuto Expressway, where you’ll be racing, features a diverse mix of winding curves, tight turns, and long straightaways. You’ll find you rarely need to brake, even when approaching challenging corners, allowing you to maintain high speeds throughout the course.

What’s most surprising about Tokyo Xtreme Racer is how strongly it evokes classic racing games. To be clear, the game’s presentation – its graphics and sound – is actually quite modern and polished. However, the core experience feels distinctly old-school. This applies to the actual racing itself, how you move through the menus, and the game’s overall design and structure. It doesn’t *look* retro, but it certainly plays like it.

The racing focuses on a classic arcade-style experience. You’ll be speeding along the Shuto Expressway, which features a diverse mix of winding curves, tight turns, and long straightaways. You’ll find yourself rarely needing to brake, even when approaching difficult corners. The gameplay is incredibly fast-paced, and it really highlights the feeling of speed, rewarding players with quick reactions as they weave through traffic during races.

Even though Tokyo Xtreme Racer is designed like a classic arcade game, it still lets you customize your car. Once you add some upgrades, you’ll unlock even more settings to tweak how your car handles. For instance, a new transmission allows you to change your gear ratios. Meanwhile, upgrading the suspension gives you control over your car’s height.

The whole story mode has you driving through the streets of Tokyo, Japan, challenging other racers to short, head-to-head sprint races whenever you cross paths with them on the road.

The core of the gameplay in Tokyo Xtreme Racer is its SP Battle system. The story mode has you driving on Tokyo’s highways, challenging other racers you encounter to 1-on-1 sprint races. These races are unique – instead of simply reaching the finish line first, you win by creating enough distance between yourself and your opponent to deplete their SP bar – think of it as a health bar – to zero. Conversely, if you fall behind, you need to catch up and prevent your own SP bar from emptying, or you’ll lose the race.

The SP Battle system is central to racing in Tokyo Xtreme Racer. The game motivates you to continuously drive on the highway-whether you win or lose-to encounter more opponents. Successfully finishing a race provides three main benefits: CP, which you can use to purchase new vehicles, performance parts, and visual customizations; BP, which unlocks access to new cars, advantages, and ongoing benefits like increased SP or better race rewards; and advancement through the game’s story campaign.

Almost all of Tokyo Xtreme Racer happens on Tokyo’s Shuto Expressway. You begin in your garage, where you select opponents to race. Then, you’re immediately placed onto the Shuto Expressway, as close as possible to your chosen target in the correct lane. You drive up to them and initiate a race with a quick flash of your headlights. The gameplay is pretty straightforward: completing a race simply returns you to the highway. You’re encouraged to keep racing until your tires wear out, at which point you need to end your night by returning to your garage.

“The story in Tokyo Xtreme Racer is minimal, but the little bit that is present is quite charming.”

Throughout the campaign in Tokyo Xtreme Racer, you’ll compete against different racing teams. To win, you need to beat each team before facing off against their leader in a final showdown. These teams are divided into three separate story arcs, and each arc has its own main boss who helps move the overall story forward.

By the way, the story in Tokyo Xtreme Racer isn’t very long or detailed, but what’s there is actually pretty enjoyable. It’s inspired by typical Japanese street racing stories, where you challenge increasingly skilled drivers to become the top racer on the Shuto Expressway. Don’t expect complicated characters or a deep plot, though. The story mostly just interrupts your racing because it will immediately take you away from the road and back to your garage whenever a story event happens. Also, there aren’t any cinematic cutscenes; instead, the story unfolds through still images and text boxes, similar to what you’d find in a PlayStation 1 game.

I have to say, there’s a lot of charm in this game! It really leans into drama as you move up through the different racing teams, which I loved. Like, after you beat a boss, you’d get these really over-the-top scenes with just text on the screen, saying things like you were “captured by the mystique of the Shuto Expressway,” or that the people you met were “the light of a soul emitted only by those who tread into the abyss.” It was so wonderfully silly! And the characters – with names like Happy Chappy, Rolling Guy, Crimson Boy and Cinderella Past Midnight – just always made me smile while I was playing. It’s definitely a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and I appreciated that.

The problems with getting started are made worse by the fact that, after you begin driving, you’re unable to fast travel or change lanes quickly.

Okay, so even though I’m really enjoying the charm and the simple, fun racing in Tokyo Xtreme Racer, it’s not perfect. One thing that’s really bothering me is how the game makes you progress. You can’t just buy upgrades for your cars whenever you want! You have to unlock them first in a skill tree, and that costs a lot of BP. And BP isn’t just for upgrades – you also need it for passive abilities, like more health or better SP damage. Honestly, you can’t even buy new cars until you unlock them in that same skill tree! It gets better later on when you’re raking in BP from racing, but early on, it’s a real struggle. There just aren’t enough racers available each night to earn enough BP, and it feels really limiting.

Honestly, the beginning of the game feels a little rough, and it gets even more frustrating because once you actually start driving, there’s no quick travel or lane changing. You’re totally locked into the direction you chose at the start of the night. I ran into a really annoying situation where I had one boss fight on one side of the Shuto Expressway, and a separate race on the other. It ended up forcing me to go through four different loading screens just to finish both storylines. It really broke up the flow, and it felt like a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth. It’s definitely something they could improve.

Thankfully, Tokyo Xtreme Racer runs very smoothly. On my PC – which has an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card – I was able to consistently achieve 144 FPS at 1440p resolution with just a few adjustments to the game’s settings. Although turning all the settings up to Ultra caused the frame rate to drop too much, the game still looked fantastic on the High preset and provided fast, responsive gameplay thanks to consistently high frame rates.

“Ultimately, you will want to mute the game’s music and set up your own playlist on the side”

The audio isn’t as strong as the other aspects of the game. The vehicles sound good, and Tokyo Xtreme Racer even realistically recreates the screeching sound of brakes when using mostly standard car parts at high speeds, and the engine sounds are also excellent. However, the music is a bit disappointing. It starts off well – the heavy electronic music with occasional metal guitar fits the game’s mood – but it lacks variety. You’ll likely want to turn the game’s music off and play your own if you don’t want to get tired of hearing the same EDM track repeatedly.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer feels like it came from a different reality – a 2003 where the PlayStation 2 had today’s power. It boasts impressive visuals and smooth frame rates that rival modern games. Yet, the menus, how the game is structured, and even the actual driving experience feel very old-fashioned, like racing games didn’t bother with brakes! Despite this, it’s undeniably fun.

You don’t need to be familiar with the Tokyo Xtreme Racer franchise to enjoy this game – or even know it exists! All you need is a taste for quick, exciting driving, a feeling of risk, and an appreciation for over-the-top stories that celebrate the thrill of racing on city highways.

This game was reviewed on PC.

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2025-10-03 20:44