An Encounter With The World Drivers Championship

Though San Francisco RUSH 2049 will always be my personal favorite arcade cabinet racer, I have two white whales within the realm of arcade cabinet racers that exist beyond those mean streets. Two racing games in this space that I have to try and find a way to make the trip to the elusive places that still have them in all their glory. The first is a game that will be mentioned later on in the BRGoF25 series and we will leave it at that. The second was one of the biggest new releases in the cabinet racer realm has seen in a very long time when it was first made available in 2018. It was significant, as for the first time in 20 years there was a non-handheld racing game that was fully dedicated to the series once called the JGTC and I knew that one day I had to play it. Which takes us to Richmond, British Columbia the day after I went to the Vancouver Game Expo.

In a previous life I did have the chance to go to the arcades that were in Tsawassen Mills and at Metropolis at Metrotown, and both of their arcade sections did feature the most modern offerings in the cabinet racer space coming out of Japan: being the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune and Initial D series of games. At the time there were two arcades at Tsawassen Mills both operated by espot as satellite branches, with a main location in Richmond that was a part of President Plaza, adjacent to the Aberdeen Centre. Only one satellite branch still remains at Tsawassen Mills, with those cabinets from the second branch now making their way to the main location that I had only driven by in that previous life. After doing a lap of the Aberdeen Centre, I had time to kill before going to the incredible Katsu San for dinner and went across the street to at least play some more WMNT and Initial D.

The right wall that led to the billiards, mahjong and darts at the far end of the arcade was Initial D Zero or Infinite and Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6R cabinets as far as the eye can see. If you had a Bandai Namco Passport card, you were set and had a place to grind out your car of choice and enjoy the stories and races that entice the player to keep pumping loonies in to your heart's content. And if it wasn't for what I did discover, I definitely would have put more time into upgrading my Subaru SVX in WMNT than I did. I ended up only doing two story mode chapters in WMNT and one race in Initial D Infinite, but only because I needed to take a break and recompose myself after racing a SEGA World Drivers Championship featuring Super GT cabinet for the very first time. It was the first thing my eyes locked onto after taking the long way around the arcade to get some change: one of the cabinet racing games I had to find a way to play didn't require flying abroad to give it a test drive.

Built on a similar cabinet chassis as Initial D Arcade Stage Zero, while running on Unreal Engine 4 and operating on the same chipset as Fate/Grand Order Arcade, SEGA World Drivers Championship filled that perfect void that existed with there being no true circuit racing game to accompany Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune and Initial D. These games built themselves on having you build your account and car of choice using your BANAPASSPORT Card and immersed you into their worlds where you are now along for the story. With this being fully licensed and built in conjunction with Super GT, that main draw had to change a little bit; it was now about building up your reputation and get offers to drive for better teams initially in the slower GT300 class before getting the challenge to race for a ride in the top-flight GT500 class. If you didn't like any of the driver offers that you unlocked along the way, you could stay with your starter GT300 car and choose to gain experience with it to increase it's performance ceiling, which was key when cross-country online races were happening in Japan between 2018 and 2021.

For what the game is trying to be, having that motivation of potentially moving to your favorite team and earning the chance to race a GT500 car is the right way to utilize the BANAPASSPORT Card. Curiously though, my personal favorite team that races in Super GT, the Japanese Lamborghini Owners Club, is absent from the game entirely. As a result, my plan before going to GT500 was develop the Team MACH Toyota MC86 until I unlocked either the R&D Sport Subaru BRZ or Team Tsuchiya Toyota MC86 on future visits. Those latter two cars have higher performance ceilings with each car also having a performance letter grade attached to them, functioning as a built in tier list. That tier list would be a big factor in those cross-country online competitions, but come to actually racing the single player campaign it won't affect your overall experience playing SEGA WDC.

The main thing you're going to have to wrestle with and accept when you do play the single player of SEGA World Drivers Championship featuring Super GT is that there is a boatload of rubber-banding and goofy antics you're going to be dealing with from your three main rivals. In the twenty-car strong GT300 field, the first sixteen opponents you're going to blast by with them crawling at a snail's pace as the race gets underway. The final three opponents, usually the Good Smile Team Ukyo AMG, the Cars Tokai Syntium Lotus Evora and the Team Mach Toyota MC86, are operating with that scripting and rubber-banding when you do get to that top four to begin the real battle of the race. They will get major speed boosts in certain sections of each track, similar to the rubber-banding in Need For Speed Underground, but you can rally back against those speed bursts easily in the corners. Assuming you don't have any big errors and keep a good pace, finishing at the top two at least is extremely likely. It's this see-saw battle that dictates the entirety of a race in SEGA WDC; and while it does feel a bit corny if you get caught out by the timing and lose the race at the very end, it is a good way to keep the player engaged the entire race without having to use a countdown timer.

The actual driving itself in the ballpark of where you want it to be for a cabinet racer that, while unusual for a title to exist in this rega is about as far towards the realistic end of the racing spectrum a cabinet racer should be. The force feedback through the wheel isn't complex, but the feedback it gives when you overdrive a corner with the outside front tire scrubbing away is excellent. Braking performance is very good, paired with an immediate response of exhaust backfire of going off throttle that is incredibly satisfying. You need to remember that this is a arcade cabinet racer; this isn't about making something that purely drives well for those of us weekend warriors playing the latest in the realistic space. This is about, in a My First Gran Turismo sort of a way, making a game that does drive somewhat realistically that anyone from 7 to 77 years of age can get comfortable with and enjoy driving; with the drivers' skill rating system helping to motivate inexperienced hands and better learn how to drive on a race track. My primary concession with the driving controls more comes a poor sense of speed and acceleration, which can make judging those short, but sharp braking zones tricky when learning tracks. But for what it is and the game knowing the full scope of it's audience, I thought SEGA World Drivers Championship was right on the mark in terms of what it's trying to express aligning with how it actually is.

To say that it was twenty dollars well spent on one cabinet in a arcade in Richmond, British Columbia would be putting it lightly. SEGA World Drivers Championship featuring Super GT does all the right things to allow it to stand on it's own two feet alongside titans in the space Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune and Initial D. It highlights the vibe and atmosphere of one of the best racing series in the world in the best way, with the supporters in the main grandstands of each track waving team flags and voice of Super GT Pierre Kitagawa providing dialogue throughout the entire game. Eventually you'll race on the real world tracks of Super GT too; with the fictional tracks you drive on early in the campaign great places to learn the more realistic driving dynamics compared to it's counterparts. It's the final head of the three-headed dragon of modern Japanese arcade cabinet racers, and if you have the chance to try any of these games you should take it with both hands. It is just a shame that it's active support only lasted those three years, and it had to have this moinker since SEGA Super GT already existed twenty years prior.

You can bet I will be back at espot for more knowing that three of the very best modern arcade cabinet racers are in the same place and merely a ferry ride away. That second white whale of mine however, will be a grand journey for another time.