Initial D Street Stage : The Game we should’ve gotten

EYYYYY, WHAT’S UP EVERYBODY?! Been a while! Yep, this post is in English for a change! And you know what that means, a new author! I am Cj, friend of Adal, remember? Has said I’d be showing up. I’ll be posting some English translations and posting some of my own reviews! Today, it’s the latter. Remember back when Adal reviewed that God-awful game, Initial D Mountain Vengeance? Well today, we’re looking at a game that does a complete 180 of that! That’s right, today, we’ll be looking at…

Figure 1.0
(Mm, dat already looks guud)

Initial-D Street Stage! This game is one of the many Initial-D games that was never released in the West, but that never stopped us! Let’s have a peek at it, shall we? QUICK WARNING, since I’m not a ‘TRUE WEEB’ I cannot understand Japanese.

1-Background Info

Initial-D Street Stage was released for the PSP in Japan on the 20^th of February in 2006. Due to the booming popularity of the Initial D Arcade Stage games, this baby took a bit of Third Stage with it, its art style and design mimicking that of Third Stage. A large amount of Initial-D games were never sold in the West due to a lack of audience, and when they did try with Mountain Vengeance, it crashed awfully. We also received up to the Third Stage Arcade Games, but once again, due to the lack of audience, those ended up being Japan only too. But anyway…to Street Stage!
2-Visual Appeal

Let’s start with the graphics. They certainly aren’t going to win any awards, especially against later titles, but they’re tolerable.

Figure 1.1

(Simple, but Effective)

The graphics in this game are fairly pixelated, looking like it’s 64bit, however, due to the time this game was released, it’s definitely acceptable, and the models of the cars don’t look half bad! Again, it could be better, but it certainly could be worse…

The same could be said about the menu. Again, simplistic, but it gets its point across. Most likely to keep the overall design of the game consistent with Third Stage’s design, and in order to make things simple and easy to access.

Figure 1.2 (Hmm…I wonder who that is blacked out?)

3-Soundtrack

Alright, NOW We’re starting to get into the interesting stuff. First of all, this game has exactly what an Initial D game should have: Eurobeat. The game features a ginormous amount of different Eurobeat tracks, such as ‘Remember Me’ and ‘Fire on the Beat’ And they fit the game extremely well. It takes exactly what the anime did with its soundtrack, and does the same thing, only putting you in the driver’s seat.

Figure 1.3 

(You can also CHANGE which Eurobeat you listen to in every race. It’s all up to you!)

There’s a ginormous amount of different styles of Eurobeat, ranging from the slightly slower ones that allow you to have more room to think and analyse, to the high-paced Eurobeat which get you really in the mood to race, and give it everything you’ve got!
4-Gameplay

OH BOY, here we go! This is the spot where Street Stage really shines compared to Mountain Vengeance. The controls are smooth, to put it bluntly, and there’s a huge amount of different options about how you want your car to handle, from how big your turning circle is, to your type of transmission. (Manual lyfe bois where u at?!) And on that note, the variety of cars in this game, IS HUGE. Seriously, most cars that appeared up to 4^th stage appear, as well as some extras.

Figure 1.4

(Toyota is just ONE of the car brands, there’s Mazda’s, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and a lot of others!)

Every car has different handling, and upgrades to an extent. There are some that remain the same, but overall, there is a HUGE difference between cars, so there’s a car for pretty much anyone’s style. My personal favourites are the RX-8 and the Trueno 86. The Trueno is a very high-risk-high-reward car; hit the guardrail, and you lose a LOT of speed, but drive properly? You basically become Takumi and start flying. And the RX-8 is just a really powerful car altogether.

When it comes to actual racing, this game is as challenging as it can get, in the main mode, Legends of the Street, you throw down with a lot of different Initial D characters. The AI (Artificial Intelligence. No, they won’t kill us all) always follow a set line, and you cannot bump them out of it (RIP Shingo Points) but they can bump you out of yours if you get in their way. Did I mention the AI are extremely difficult? Seriously, facing Takumi on Normal mode was difficult for me at first, and I still struggle against Takumi on hard mode. The courses are unforgiving, with lots of hairpins everywhere. But once you start getting the hang of the course, and how your car handles, tackling these courses crazy fun.

Figure 1.1

(It rains when you face an opponent you’ve already beaten, meaning although making it easy to start a drift, pretty much harder in everything else)

You can also perform Time-Attack, which is exactly what it sounds like, and multiplayer, where you can battle your friends, and yes, bump each other (SHINGO POINTS ARE BACK BABYYY) but other than that, there really isn’t much gameplay wise, its your standard racing game, with our favourite little anime twist in it.
5-Verdict

Time to place my verdict… and that is, this is an overall great game. It has its flaws, with the AI being overpowered in races, and the graphics aren’t too flashy, but the game flows amazingly, and once you learn the game, you start FLYING. Its one of those “Easy to Learn, Hard to Master” games. And with all the secrets and tricks, you won’t want to stop playing.. And on that BOMBSHELL, its time to end the blog, thank you so much for reading about my latest addiction, GOOD NIGHT.