You love anime? You love Saturn? You love EUROBEAT? You love racing? Well… Do I maybe not have the game for you…
Released in Japan on June 25th, 1998, this was the first, and remains the only Initial D game released for home consoles (Though the series thrived in arcades thanks to the Initial D Arcade series of games by SEGA).
For a little background into Initial D, the series is a racing based manga published in Weekly Young Magazine by Shuichi Shigeno, eventually being adapting into an anime series in the late 90s.
The story revolves around Takumi Fujiwara, a high school student with an unknown knack for racing. He regularly delivers Tofu for his father on the mountain passes of Akina, and over the course of 5 years, builds up drifting and racing skills in his father’s Toyota AE86 (More commonly known as a Toyota Corolla).
Once realizing his ability to drive and drift through the dangerous mountains of his hometown, he slowly becomes one of the top racers in the area, and dominates cars twice the horsepower of his own aging Corolla.
The Saturn game pretty much follows the story of the anime and manga, each race following a story arc in the show, so you will face all the opponents Takumi eventually battles in the first season of the show (Albeit a bit more abridged..)
The game has some pretty impressive animation and visual flair for it’s time, and even looks feels better than the actual anime series (Well, at least the second season’s visuals). Each loading screen has art based on the manga, and is a real treat when it shows up.
The game however, does suffer from some issues that makes it not really worth recommending if you are into Genki style racers. The biggest one being the difficult to get used to drifting mechanics and steering controls.
While seeming to be straight forward, drifting is plagued by constant oversteer issues, which will more than not leave you flipped around the other direction when trying to perform a drift.
While you get used to the mechanics after a while, it’s definitely something that will put off new players to this game. Once you figure it out though, you’ll be nailing those races in no time! (Or at least flipped around less often).
There’s also the glaring oversight of calling certain cars the wrong name..
One of the biggest low points (Besides the rough controls), is the music. The anime series is known for it’s high intensity Eurobeat soundtrack, and sadly the game itself contains none.. Luckily, a mod all the way back from 2016 was released to remedy this.
On October 22nd, 2016, user Mr. 357 on the Initial D World Forums released a mod for the Saturn game that replaced most of the music with a more appropriate Eurobeat based soundtrack:
While not a translation or fix for the game itself, it’s an amazing mod within itself. Almost making dealing with the difficult controls worth it!
Sadly, many of the people on the forum didn’t see it as… Well.. very useful, with only one other user commenting on the thread, just wondering why 357 bothered modding it in the first place:
You might be thinking the same, but this is SHIRO!, where we find any little change and fix interesting, especially involving the Saturn!
Many years later, Mr. 357 himself found the video SaturnDave posted showcasing the mod, and gave a little more insight into the project:
This mod isn’t really game changing, and certainly doesn’t improve the overall gameplay experience of the game, it helps give a better atmosphere for the experience as a whole. You finally can feel like Takumi taking those fast corners, drifting right past your opponent, and seeing the look on their face when you speed through that finish line (Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit..).
Either way, I definitely recommend checking out this mod at least once, even if you hate the gameplay. The mod itself seems to have a certain charm to it I never felt with the original game..
While we cannot provide a download link to said mod, if you search up Initial D Saturn Eurobeat mod, I’m sure you’ll be able to find it out there.
You can also check out both videos SaturnDave did about said game, with a more professional Let’s Play he did on the Eurobeat mod below:
“Released in Japan on June 25th, 1998, this was the first, and remains the only Initial D game released for home consoles”
I’m not sure what do this mean, the Playstation version was released in 1999, followed by PS2 and I believe PS3 releases, not sure if PS4 onwards got releases but it’s possible. The PSP also has one entry in the series.
The PS1 version is much better than the Saturn, draw distances in this is atrocious.
I love this console, but I have to give credit where it’s due, I believe they could have pulled off a much better racing game, but things like DOOM happens.
It’s not a big deal saying no other Initial D game was released on other consoles, it’s just a game, maybe you wanted just to say it was the very first game to be released in a home console instead?