The tight and twisty roads of the countryside look incredible as your 90s JDM four-door tries to clutch-kick it down, your girlfriend is starting to be impressed as you keep on sliding, fully focused on the roads ahead.
JDM: Japanese Drift Masters set out to be the racing game that just channels the soul of the Japanese Tuner culture, from the cars, to the act of drifting and even delivery of food in the weirdest of ways, via car. All the while, J-Pop or even Eurobeat could be blaring in your music. And it being this easy to pick up and play does wonders as well. Maybe a contender for best Racing Game of the Year, if they pick the right lines.
Presentation![]()
The style of the game just oozes style, with how it presents itself from the get-go, like telling its story using Manga panels, the sights of Guntama looking both colorfully pink at one point of the town, and lushes green backroads at the other, it just knows what to present to the players when they boot up the game the first time. Heck, the camera angles that you can choose have some nice selection that also feels like something you would see Youtube and such, especially this one fish-eye lens one that’s just enhanced the speed tenfolds, somehow.
And like a certain racing game series that came back recently, JDM going for Unreal Engine 5 has done wonders in how it looks and plays even on dated graphics cards, like a GTX 1060 perhaps. It runs perfectly fine and I reckon it could even run this well on portable stuff, like a Steam Deck or Legion GO.
Let’s not forget to mention the music selection is quite unique when you consider the other contemporaries. You have the Phonk tracks and the EDM stuff if you desire, but there’s also music from Eurobeat stuff, J-Pop and even East Asian Raps. it’s a lot of interesting music that keeps the creative flow going and lends a hand in being different from other racers within it’s scope of music being more interesting, in my books.
Gameplay
The core of JDM is probably very obvious from its name from the get-go. It’s all about drifting. Get that flow-state and see how high you could chain those combos, being one with your car as the points requirement gets higher and your rivals get harder. And really, the driving model is just lovely, with how easy it is to initiate a drift (or not if you’re doing a Time Attack run) and how different it feels with different cars and their setups.
Like, the car that you bought from the lot at Stock would drive much differently with the vehicle that later on, has an angle kit, locked differential, and skinny tires, which does a good job in telling you that this car that you have is kitted out for their specific race type. That means modifications and the act of setting up the automobile must be essential, and that too is quite in-depth with the parts you choose.
All of it does contribute to how you’ll complete the missions, which does have a pretty good variety as you go along, from the Drift races on the mountain roads to dashing on the highway and even racing within a proper track, it’s keeps the driving engaging and sometimes even surprised me on how well thought out everything is. 
All of which is dotted around the map for the players to find. Heck, if you feel like you need a refresher course on Drifting, there’s even a Driving School for that bit and yeah, you will get sucked into it like the Gran Turismo License test.
Content![]()
Japanese Drift Masters does include some of the heroes within the Japanese Domestic Market scene (yeah, that’s what JDM actually means!), so you have the likes of the Nissan Skyline GTR R34, Mazda RX-7, and even a Honda Kei truck that you could buy as well. It has a lean car list compared to more established racers but does help with making any of the cars within its roster wholly yours.
Though there’s no livery editor at launch to sweeten that deal, which could have made the car you own feel more personal, it’s made up of a pretty good amount of modifiable parts that you could unlock during gameplay as every new car starts with a proficient level of 1 to max level where you can get the big stuff unlocked, like Superchargers and such.
And while the 230KM² map is fun to drive, with the long stretches of touge roads and even full-on highways that’s just built to be going over 200kph, it’s a single player experience (for now) so as you travel along, it feels quite bare at times and I do wish it has multiplayer for some shenanigans with your mates, but that is in the works as well, so what we have right now could change in the future.
But really, I reckon you could spend a pretty good 10 hours on just the story campaign stuff alone, with it twisting and turning during each mission, it’s quite fun to see where it goes and it does sometimes play out like an Initial D chapter, complete with the funny duels at the end of the volume as well. But who’s complaining, since I won’t.
Personal Enjoyment![]()
It’s great to see the indie scene picking up the slack of covering the void that has been left by a certain street racing series that’s taking a hiatus due to their publisher’s pretense of a shooter series taking importance, and it’s nice to see the likes of Genki’s Tokyo Xtreme Racers and now Japanese Drift Masters, taking their own hands into making a racing game that’s just gets it right.
Even now the game starts out, shifting you onto a fully tuned Nissan and a map to explore if you so desire without any time limits, feels like an unintentional throwback to that same aforementioned rival, and I love it. And drifting just feels like second nature really, with how easy for me to just jump in and then go towards a multicombo run like I’m Keiichi Tsuchiya within the areas of a track that suspiciously looks like Tsukuba but funkier.
And I’m just enjoying my time with this one, such an incredible burst of fun each time I sit down and play it.
Verdict ![]()
JDM: Japanese Drift Masters understands the need to make a racing game fun to play, for them to create such an enjoyable game that’s about getting a car and doing anything with it, all the while speeding through the city or even the countryside in turns that you will need to slide around, makes me fail to say the words that can describe my excitement to play this even after it’s launch.
I highly recommend this one. Buy it now and you’ll sure won’t be disappointed being in the driver’s seat.
Reviewed On PC, Review Copy provided by the developer
JDM: Japanese Drift Masters
The game understands the need to make a racing game fun to play and such an enjoyable game that’s all about getting a car and doing anything with it, while speeding through the city or even the countryside in turns that you need to slide around.
- Presentation 9.5
- Gameplay 9
- Content 8.5
- Personal Enjoyment 9