Initial D Arcade Stage 4

[Nisa]

Had a chance to play this while in London at the weekend. Despite being on the Lindbergh board the leap in visuals over 3 is pretty minimal but anyone that's played 1-3 to death will spot the improvements right away. The cabinet has been completely overhauled, it now has 2 HD screens,the gear stick placement has been moved to the players side and it now uses decent plastic IC cards instead of the flimsy cardboard ones in previous versions.

Presentation has changed quite a bit as well, you now have an in game avatar (male or female) which gets printed on your card and can be modified after a number of races. You can now store 3 cars on a single card which is something I've been wanting or ages, no more carrying one card for my RX7 and another for my Trueno. Car upgrades are now purchased with points won in races through an in game store but you only seem to get a chance to purchase them after every few races.

The gameplay has changed quite a bit as well especially in the handling, there seems to be a completely different technique required for cornering and despite getting up to Keisuke on Akagi I still couldn't figure out how to maintain high speeds around bends as every time I'd go to top gear after exiting a corner my speed would drop considerably. Some of the courses have changed as well, the first track is now Lake Akina which is a basic loop similar to the original Myogi, Myogi itself is now the same track as the one on Special Stage but is much more fun to drive on than on PS2 for some reason. The other new track is Tsukuba but I never got a chance to try it out, Akagi,Akina and Irohazaka are the only remaining courses from previous versions.

I really hope this comes to PS3 or 360, as much as I enjoy the likes of Forza 2 & Ridge Racer 7 there hasn't been a driving game that could topple Initial D as my favourite all time favourite racer.

[Taka]

That mini review sounds fantastic. Like me, I've probably put more hours into Special Stage on the PS2 than any other game bar some RPGs over the years. Was it at the Troc where you got to play it? Might have to plan a London trip for this...

[Nisa]

Yeah Troc, I think they got it in quite recently along with VF5.

[dvdmike]

they did they got that and Wangdan midnight

[Nisa]

One of the things I forgot to mention is that it's the original anime voice actors in the cut scenes (which now use 3d models) and during the races, I believe these were taken out in the western releases of the older arcade games,unfortunately the dreaded Tokyopop name changes for each character remain, so you still have to put up with racing "Tak" & "Iggy". Another problem is the load times which are a bit too long for my liking oh and there's is some pretty bad engrish in there as well but that's not too difficult to look past.