After more than 20 years on the bench, classic arcade driving game Tokyo Xtreme Racer is slated for one of the unlikeliest comebacks as developer Genki has announced a new title for 2025.
For those not familiar with the series — and it does have a very complex naming and publication history — it began life in 1994 as Shutoko Battle ’94 on the Super Nintendo, drawing its name from the “Shuto Kosoku-doro” Tokyo highway. A later installment, released on PlayStation in 1996, was localized in Europe and North America with the Tokyo Highway Battle name.
The first true title in the series was 1999’s Tokyo Xtreme Racer on the Sega Dreamcast, although this too had different names in Japan (Shutoko Battle) and Europe (Tokyo Highway Challenge). Nonetheless, the game and its sequel in 2000 garnered a cult following for its depictions of the underground Japanese street-racing scene. A PS2 title, Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero, followed in 2001, and while the USA and Japan also got a follow-up to that in Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 there was no corresponding European release.
Whichever title you played, you could select from a range of mostly Japanese vehicles, faithfully modeled but — until TXR3 — unlicensed, which meant some creative badging and chassis codes in place of real names. The vehicles could be extensively upgraded to make it easier to win the one-on-one highway battles that were the core of the gameplay loop.
Aside from some interim and sibling titles from Genki — like the Kaido Battle subseries, Wangan Midnight, and a number of Shutoko Battle titles on several platforms — the 2003 appearance of TXR3 was really the last we saw of the name, until now.
Genki began to tease the possibility of a new Tokyo Xtreme Racer game earlier this week, and finally let the cat out of the bag with a new video on a new dedicated YouTube channel, and a Steam store listing for the game, currently just called “Tokyo Xtreme Racer“. Racing game title reboots are so hot right now.
Details are naturally scarce at this extremely early stage, but from the description on the Steam page it would seem that if you remember the TXR of 20 years ago — particularly TXR:0 — you probably know what to expect.
The teaser states that the game will be set in “a sealed-off future Tokyo”, and will center on racing customized cars against rivals while you “slip through other cars”. From what we can see in the images provided, the Tokyo Expressway is looking like the main venue — and you may even recognize some section from Gran Turismo 7’s mashups.
At present the game is set only to release for PC via Steam, and is inked in for a 2025 launch date — more likely than not towards the tail end of the year. Stay tuned for all the latest!
