Initial D: Mountain Vengeance

Initial D: Mountain Vengeance is a 2004 racing video game developed by Canopy Games and published by ValuSoft for Microsoft Windows. It is based on the manga and anime series of the same name. It is one of the only Initial D games to be released in North America, and not in Japan.

Why It's Fumbling in the 90's

 * 1) It does nothing to explain the storyline of either the anime or the manga, potentially leaving newcomers confused.
 * 2) Awful graphics, comparable to 5th generation console games, such as Ridge Racer, Gran Turismo, Sega Rally Championship, Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune (mostly Wangan Midnight R), and Initial D’s own pre-Arcade Stage licensed game.
 * 3) An overly-repetitive soundtrack that at first seemed like it only has one song (Initialize), and has absolutely none of the J-Pop/Eurobeat songs that made the anime so memorable. However, checking the game's files reveals that there are eleven music tracks (in this case .OGG) files, complete with a customizable playlist configuration file that isn’t randomized. You can unlock the ability to change the music, but the songs are the horrible hip-hop/rock songs from the poorly received Tokyopop dub. That explains why they used names from the dub itself at the driver select screen (Takumi Fujiwara was named "Tak").
 * 4) Non-existent sound-effects that get drowned out by the aforementioned repetitive soundtrack.
 * 5) Emotionless and uncharismatic voice acting that is ripped straight from the Tokyopop dub of Initial D: First Stage.
 * 6) Terribly short draw distance, which can result in the entire map being dark.
 * 7) The car models were poor and clearly do not resemble the actual cars itself in real life or particularly, the anime and manga itself due to the licensing issues. For example, the iconic Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-APEX (AE86) does not have the Trueno logo on the rear bumper, nor the black bonnet on the front.
 * 8) Poor AI that provides no real challenge because it drives very slowly.
 * 9) The game has only four tracks, and all of them are the exact same mountain course.
 * 10) Slippery controls and poor physics which make it hard to handle your car. You can, and you will grind into walls way too many times.
 * 11) Sometimes, they placed the cars ahead of the starting line (get ahead start), in the wrong position.
 * 12) Broken drifting. Whenever you do it, your car goes out of control...and you can still get ahead of the CPU player.
 * 13) When running this game on Windows 8 and 10, the game may produce garbled colors throughout the game, even in the game's opening intro and logo. Unless if you set the video settings to highest resolution and run the game on XP backwards compatibility.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) At least, some of the characters' names remain unchanged from the original Japanese version.

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