Tokyo Xtreme Racer tapped into street racing, but was more grounded, without Racing Lagoon's story or unique language. Gran Turismo was its contemporary, but only for legal racing. 'The game dives into Japanese tuner culture as a whole in a way that I've never seen anything else before or after,' Syd says. Syd first played Racing Lagoon in 2011 and has wanted to help make it easier for other people to play it for years. 'My friends have been having to suffer through me talking about it non-stop for the past decade,' says Syd-88, who joined the translation project not as a translator, but as an automotive consultant.

Suddenly there was a chance that this cult object could be playable in English, and people who loved the game jumped at the opportunity to help. The late '90s street racing aesthetic is intensely nostalgic for 30-somethings who grew up watching Initial D, playing Gran Turismo, and lusting after Nissan Skylines. It's a pure crystal-no part of it could really ever be recreated.' 'I think of this game like a beautiful diamond. There is just nothing like it, at all, and people need to see it,' he says. If you want to buy a super rare CD of the jazz fusion saxophone wailing over techno, be prepared to pay as much as $1,000. 'The soundtrack is a world unto itself that I just wanted to hang out in all the time,' he says. PancakeTaicho cites Racing Lagoon's music (opens in new tab) as the main reason he fell in love with the game.

Racing Lagoon iso english