Sometimes, I do wonder what happen to Genki, the small-ish game developer that made the games we call in English as Tokyo Xtreme Racer (or Shutokou Battle as it’s known in Japan). As a kid, I have fond memories of playing some of these on the PS2, it offered a racing experience no other games of its period offered, yet was not rated highly among gaming magazine critics (Metacritic has Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3, one of the best entries, hovering in the 60s).
I think the game critics of the time were wrong, I wished for a time when Genki making these games again for a new audience in hopes that they are now more receptive of it (similar to FromSoftware’s underrated Armored Core series, which also was only middling but finally got its dues with Armored Core VI).
But where are they now? Are they alright? Like, genki desuka? They’re seem to have been dormant for a long time.
Turns out they’re still around and they’re doing alright. They’re still making games, but now seemingly out of nowhere they return with a new Tokyo Xtreme Racer. Simply titled as Tokyo Xtreme Racer.
What seems like a reboot of the underrated racing game with one of the most unique racing systems is actually a legacy sequel. It’s a plotline that continued not right after Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3, but after Import Tuner Challenge, which had a weird localised English name but is actually part of the Shutokou Battle series.
Now that the game is released in full after a period of Early Access earlier this year, I’ve played a good 20 hours of it. And man, Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025) can feel like playing a 20-year-old game at times, affectionately, yet remarkably it feels so fresh to play a racing game like no other.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer: The Racing Game That Plays Like A Fighting Game
So what is Tokyo Xtreme Racer? Here’s the pitch. You drive around the Shuto Expressway, and you race fellow racers in your tuned up car.
But it’s not an ordinary race, it has what’s called the SP Battle system where who wins the duel is determined by who can bring down their opponent’s SP bar first through methods including leading by a fine margin. You and your opponents can also take SP damage from colliding against walls and traffic. It’s less of a race, and more of a head-to-head battle like it’s a fighting game.
But instead of the victor the ones who can pull flashy combos, it’s the one who can consistently drive fast, weaving through traffic, negotiate tight curves, and blast at top speed on straights, all without crashing.
There’s really no equal to Tokyo Xtreme Racer’s battle system. I still remember how awfully disappointed I was playing Need For Speed Underground 2, a contemporary of Tokyo Xtreme Battle at the time, when the outrun head-to-head challenge was just a race to a predetermined finish line instead of an SP Battle. Tokyo Xtreme Racer was ridiculously underrated in its time.
On a side note, it was from Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero where I learned about The Fast And The Furious movie, it featured a promo trailer within the game. TXR preceded the import tuner craze that defined racing games of the 2000s, it was that ahead of time.
So I am so happy to see TXR 2025 bringing back SP Battles in all of its glory. Racing through the tight two-lane highways on the C1 loop route is still tricky. Following behind the opponent is tense as you never know when they’ll swerve to the other lane to avoid a slow car that makes up the traffic you find on these public roads. Being in the lead is nerve-wracking as you hold on to dear life with the pedal hitting the metal in hopes that the SP bar drains out before you hit a truck or a bend, risking not braking to end gambling that the battle ends before you need to.
The rivals’ AI has some personality too in TXR (2025). Some will attempt to block you as you peek out of the slipstream. Others will immediately side-swipe you if there’s a chance. Some would respond to being overtaken by hitting that nitrous boost to blast back to the front. Though that doesn’t mean they drive perfectly all the time. Some battles do resolve anticlimactically due to them smacking some traffic car or those pillars that goes down between the lanes at Ginza (there’s an achievement for hitting that pillar, hilariously).
Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025) didn’t have to do much to innovate and still the SP Battle system proves to be in a league of its own. But it did get some slight changes thanks to skills. Drivers can now equip at most three different skills to reflect their playstyle while battling. This ranges from increasing the distance before you take SP damage when being outrun to taking less damage when wall-riding and hitting cars.
The seemingly most useful, best-in-slot of the skills is the one where you can regain SP by nailing corners perfectly and doing near-misses. That sounds overpowered on paper, but getting those near-misses are not as easy in Burnout, Need For Speed and other games inspired by Burnout. You really need to weave in real close without touching a traffic car for the heal. Ridiculous risk for minor reward, until you can upgrade that skill. And it’s not just you that have these skills to equip, your rivals do too.
The typical game loop of Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025) is that you go cruise around the highway (there’s an auto-cruise option if you wish to take a hands-off leisurely stroll), find other racers that are also on the prowl, and challenge them to a battle via flashing the headlights. Most racers automatically accept a battle request, unless they’re a Wanderer.
And from there you can keep running around the highway to search for more battles, or call it a night to start fresh tomorrow. The ability to end a run is mostly used when you don’t want to do a long drive to the next unchallenged racer where it’s more optimal to start a new day (night) at a different entrance point closer to them, rather than having to drive all the way there. Plus, if you toggle in the water and oil temperature feature, you can’t sustain long runs unless you pace yourself between battles (which means you have to slowly drive to catch the next racer) or take breaks at the parking areas, a new feature for the mainline Tokyo Xtreme Racer series.
A Living World And Community Of Street Racers
The parking areas are cool. Not only are the highway routes are based on actual roads you can drive in Tokyo, the parking areas featured here are iconic to car culture nerds. From the Tatsumi PA to the Daikoku PA, overlooking massive roundabouts-in-the-sky and host to real car meets in Japan. This was a feature seen in the spin-off Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift (i.e. Kaidou Battle). The parking lots here in TXR (2025) you can replenish your tyres and nitrous (for a price), talk to onlookers and fellow racers to learn the lore and also challenge a racers you otherwise wouldn’t see on the highway.
And yes, there’s lore and story in Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025), just like the previous games. As mentioned earlier, it’s a continuation of the previous, most recent game which I personally didn’t play because it was on the Xbox 360, exclusively. But even without really know what happened then, just stuff from TXR0 and TXR3, TXR (2025) fills you in on what happened and what’s happening in the world of street racing, via three different arcs. One arc is about a character from TXR3 making their legendary return, the other from Import Tuner Challenge, and the last dedicated to the newbloods, the new generation of speedsters entering the fray.
This is why I call this a legacy sequel, it is picking up the story from a long, dormant franchise from decades ago and it is passing the torch where old stalwarts are interacting with new faces.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025) doesn’t have voice acting, doesn’t have 3D models for characters (they are all represented in 2D silhouettes, most of them generic and reused to represent several people). Yet, the worldbuilding is compelling.
It’s not just in the rivals’ biodata where you discover who these drivers of customised machines are. It can unravel as part of parking lot gossip. Like the guy who just got married who now has to leave their team with a strict “singles-only” rule, but can’t join his wife’s as she’s in a ladies-only team. Or the fabled tales of those legends seeking a return to the highway. Inter-team banter. Intra-team banter.
It helps that rival teams, old and new, are just as interesting as ever. I’d thought the Rolling Guys being the perennial bottom feed is funny, but they’re now so influential that they’ve spawned multiple 86-themed teams. Then there’s that team of 11 racers all in football gear, the American kind. Or that team with a love triangle situation which results in all three racing against you when challenged to a battle. Or the team where they all dressed in lolita and goth fashion, which of course featured a cross-dresser. A lot of gals and interestingly non-binary racers are in Tokyo these days. Some of these lore gets developed, which makes the world even more intriguing, and something to latch on as, as much as the SP Battles are fun, can get monotonous.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025), just like its predecessors, is another example of making people care about characters with just good enough writing and not necessarily having to attach a face to them, like Armored Core has done for the longest time.
Still Lacking Scope And Budget, After All These Years
While there are a lot of goodness to be had in Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025), it has its faults. In particular, the content. The way Genki scope their games predate the indie game label, they’re B-games more or less.
Putting TXR (2025) the expectations of a indie game by a relatively small team is the right mindset to judge the game’s merit, but it can’t go unnoticed how scaled back the game is compared to its predecessors from 20 years ago.
You only get to race on the Shuto Expressway, sans the Yokohama area. The car list is at a decent 76-count at version 1.0, but it’s limited to only Japanese brands, each with a handful of customisation options, if any. And the customisation options are limited compared to modern standards: Front bumper, rear bumper, side skirts, bonnet (hood), rear wing (spoiler), neon and wheels (with alignment and stance adjustments available).
Yeah, even Need For Speed Underground had more customisation options. The choice of each part is at most three custom aftermarket parts, which does include some licensed kits by real, less globally known brands which is cool to see. Yet still, the options are paltry.
The good news is that Honda is now featured in the series for the first time, but I would’ve love to see some imports. No, the one Mitsubishi Eclipse GT that actually never sold in Japan doesn’t count. It doesn’t help that that model doesn’t have any customisation. A bone-stock Eclipse in a game about tuners, imagine that.
At least the car list has its quirky selections, like the Daihatsu Move, the Toyota Vellfire and the various kei cars. So it’s still a fun list of cars. Some cars get licensed body kits which is nice, and there’s a good selection of wheels even if all you want to put is a set of Volk Racing TE37s. Of course they have TE37 wheels.
While I love the music, which features a lot of remixes of songs from past TXR games, it can get repetitive on long plays. And I have to spend 20 hours to reach the mid-point of the story.
Closing Thoughts
From what I’ve played of Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025), it is absolutely a blast. I’m biased a bit as I’m nostalgic and grew up with the franchise, so newer folks might feel the game lacks a lot of something they might’ve expected.
But for me, who just wished the series to return so that folks that grew up with the series can give its due flowers, this is exactly what I wanted out of it. It’s not perfect, but when you’re in a league of your own, you can get away with all of that. Though I do hope it’s successful enough for Genki to really throw everything they can by making the game bigger, or making a bigger game next time around.
I can’t wait to see how Night Runners, another indie game about racing on highways in Japan directly inspired by this series, shapes up to be.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025) is out now on PC (Steam) and is coming to PS5.
Played on PC. Game purchased by the reviewer.