Street Supremacy
Race for respect through the highways of Tokyo.
Published: February 3, 2006
Japanese developer Genki has made a name for themselves crafting games that are at their core little more than simple upgrade cycles, if you will an RPG-style leveling grind. They've done it for years with street racing car in their Tokyo Highway Battle series, and more recently with robots (okay, Scoobies) in S.L.A.I.. The latter was published by Konami, so it shouldn't be that big a surprise to see them publishing a PSP version of their classic racing series.
What is surprising is that Konami elected to drop any version of the original name, be it the likely Crave-owned Tokyo Xtreme Racer (and we fully support the annexing of "Xtreme" from all game titles), or the perfectly descriptive original Tokyo Highway Battle, instead electing to dub it Street Supremacy.
Whatever the name, though, it's still the series trademark sequence of races against opponents with Spirit Points, a meter that slowly drops as one racer pulls away from the other, or gets shaved off more readily as punishment for crashes into walls or other cars. The only real difference for the PSP version is that Genki, probably for reasons of streaming and saving on battery life, had to drop the free-roaming, challenge-anyone aspect of the game.
Instead, Tokyo is split into sectors controlled by familiar gangs like the Wanderers and Rolling Guy. You'll choose a team initially to race for, and then start tackling parts of the city. At first, you can only challenge your own team members or rival gangs that are stupid enough to ride into your turf, but eventually as you take over more of the city by beating all the racers in a gang (and finally their leader), you'll own more of the city and can move around a little.
In between races, you'll return to the garage to make tweaks to your car, check out the standings and, if you want to upgrade, call it a day. You're then graded on your performance and given experience points that in turn levels you up as a driver. We didn't have enough time to see how this would affect things like driving ability, but at least early on the game suffered from two major problems: literally no sense of speed -- even at 100+ MPH -- and races that lasted all of 20 or 30 seconds, followed by lots of loading, all wrapped up in the series' familiar car-on-a-pole physics.
The upgrade part of the game is still plenty intriguing, however. SS will bring with it dozens of different licensed cars, and all offer upgrades for everything from transmission to turbo and NA tuned upgrades to exhaust, tires, drive train and so on. There are tons of different levels of customization for the body too, from the purely aesthetic (stupid huge spoiler, anyone?) to parts that improve downforce and ride height, body roll and overall weight.
The game needs a serious sense of speed, and it would be nice to have races that lasted longer than the load times for them, but the core of the game, the upgrading and the leveling up, all of that has arrived on the PSP completely intact, and with graphics that are fairly good (the PSP seems to be the perfect home for flashy racing games). We didn't get a chance to test it out, but Wi-Fi battles are also included, which should make for some fun multiplayer.
The handling is designed for drift-style races, so it's understandable, but the framerate and sense of speed desperately need an upgrade. Hopefully Konami can pull that off before the game hits sometime in "early 2006."
What is surprising is that Konami elected to drop any version of the original name, be it the likely Crave-owned Tokyo Xtreme Racer (and we fully support the annexing of "Xtreme" from all game titles), or the perfectly descriptive original Tokyo Highway Battle, instead electing to dub it Street Supremacy.
Whatever the name, though, it's still the series trademark sequence of races against opponents with Spirit Points, a meter that slowly drops as one racer pulls away from the other, or gets shaved off more readily as punishment for crashes into walls or other cars. The only real difference for the PSP version is that Genki, probably for reasons of streaming and saving on battery life, had to drop the free-roaming, challenge-anyone aspect of the game.
Instead, Tokyo is split into sectors controlled by familiar gangs like the Wanderers and Rolling Guy. You'll choose a team initially to race for, and then start tackling parts of the city. At first, you can only challenge your own team members or rival gangs that are stupid enough to ride into your turf, but eventually as you take over more of the city by beating all the racers in a gang (and finally their leader), you'll own more of the city and can move around a little.
In between races, you'll return to the garage to make tweaks to your car, check out the standings and, if you want to upgrade, call it a day. You're then graded on your performance and given experience points that in turn levels you up as a driver. We didn't have enough time to see how this would affect things like driving ability, but at least early on the game suffered from two major problems: literally no sense of speed -- even at 100+ MPH -- and races that lasted all of 20 or 30 seconds, followed by lots of loading, all wrapped up in the series' familiar car-on-a-pole physics.
The upgrade part of the game is still plenty intriguing, however. SS will bring with it dozens of different licensed cars, and all offer upgrades for everything from transmission to turbo and NA tuned upgrades to exhaust, tires, drive train and so on. There are tons of different levels of customization for the body too, from the purely aesthetic (stupid huge spoiler, anyone?) to parts that improve downforce and ride height, body roll and overall weight.
The game needs a serious sense of speed, and it would be nice to have races that lasted longer than the load times for them, but the core of the game, the upgrading and the leveling up, all of that has arrived on the PSP completely intact, and with graphics that are fairly good (the PSP seems to be the perfect home for flashy racing games). We didn't get a chance to test it out, but Wi-Fi battles are also included, which should make for some fun multiplayer.
The handling is designed for drift-style races, so it's understandable, but the framerate and sense of speed desperately need an upgrade. Hopefully Konami can pull that off before the game hits sometime in "early 2006."
