Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero Hands-On

Tokyo Xtreme Racer for the Dreamcast took the amazingly popular after-dark illegal street-racing scene in Japan and based a video game on it. In the game, you were a driver who took to the highways of Japan, challenging other drivers to quick races to earn money and prove that you were the best Xtreme Racer in Tokyo. The PS2 version of the game, Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero, promises to spice up the action of the Dreamcast game with PS2-enhanced visuals and more goodies than ever.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero has all the modes of the Dreamcast version. The quest mode is the main mode of the game. In it, you purchase and modify your car, then take to the highways of Tokyo night after night in your quest to challenge rival drivers, earn money, and improve your racing record. The game also sports a quick race mode, where you simply drive one race against a randomly chosen rival, and a time trial mode, where you race a portion of the track against the clock. Tokyo Xtreme Racer takes an amazingly different approach to the standard racing game. Instead of having several tracks available to you, Tokyo Xtreme Racer has only one highway loop, with only a few alternate paths. This loop can be played in either direction, and both directions actually take different paths, instead of simply being mirrored versions of each other. As you make your way around the giant highway, you'll run into rival racers. You'll be able to challenge these rivals to races, and you'll gain or lose money depending on the outcome. The races don't have a predetermined start or finish, and a rival can be challenged to a race at any point on the highway. The outcome of the race is determined by the results of the SP meter during the race. Both you and your opponent have an SP meter, and the meter will be depleted while your car is in second place or whenever your car hits an obstacle. How quickly the meter is depleted depends on the size of the lead between the two cars--a close race could last for several minutes, while a blow-out could end in moments. After racing, you can either continue cruising for action or retire to your garage, where you can spend your winnings on car upgrades or an entirely new ride altogether.

The game has plenty of good stuff to spend your in-game cash on. While Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero has no actual car licenses, the game sports an amazing lineup of more than 150 cars. Most of these cars are locked at the start of the game, but they can be unlock by racing special rival drivers or by throwing down a huge amount of cash in the quest mode. The cars in the game are all modeled after popular Japanese cars, though the lack of licensing has forced the game to come up with some ridiculous mock names for the cars featured in the game. Still, it's easy to identify popular models from Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota, Acura, Nissan, and Mitsubishi and imported models from manufacturers such as BMW and Porsche. Additionally, each car has a huge amount of aftermarket parts that can be purchased and added to the car to tweak its performance or look. You'll be able to buy upgrades for your car's engine, suspension, transmission, aerodynamics, wheels, and body. Each of these categories has several subcategories, and each subcategory has a few purchasing options. You'll be able to choose from a selection of parts that ranges from mufflers, air filters, and tweakable gearboxes to bumper kits and obnoxious spoilers. Altogether, the game boasts 17 different parts categories and more than 70 individual parts upgrades. Additionally, the developers have spent an enormous amount of time adding a whole catalog of aftermarket wheels and rims to the game, and you'll be able to pick from more than 100 different wheels, each one with different plate or color options.