Getting “Fast” and “Furious” With Namco Bandai’s New Racer

by Louis Bedigian

“We didn't want to have a game where all the customization is based on fictional or knock-off parts.”

Are you faster than fast? Quicker than quick? Do you dream of being Steve McQueen – or Lightning McQueen? Does the smell of motor oil pique your interest higher than the smell of fresh barbeque?

If you’re a speed-driven gamer, always living your life in the fast lane, then you might have what it takes to compete in The Fast and the Furious. Based on the movie trilogy of the same name, The Fast and the Furious is more than just another street racer.

“We’re taking what people do in the real scene and building gameplay around it,” said Mitch Boyer of the Namco Bandai Games production team. “Drifting is an actual lifestyle, it’s an actual scene. And it’s something that was important for us to get into the game.”

Whoa, hit the brakes. Did you just say drifting?

“Drifting is kind of like road racing,” describes Gary McKinney, drift team manager from McKinney Motorsports. “We’re running a race line on a pre-determined course. But we are basically running the car on the edge of traction. We’re purposely bringing the car into a slide [while] maintaining control of the vehicle.” 

Ahh, I get it. Slidin—

“It’s not something where you’re just sliding the car around,” Gary adds. “It’s very precise driving. It takes a lot of skill to get the car to do what you need it to do.”

“They say it started in the late 80s up in the mountains in Japan,” he continues. “A bunch of guys were racing up and down the mountains (like everyone does). It came to a point where a lot of the drivers will go so fast that they were losing traction. They were actually breaking the tires loose. But being a young guy you don’t ever want to let up, and you keep going.

“They noticed that the people watching them race enjoyed the guys turning the cars sideways and continuing more than the actual racing. It became more about showing off.”

Interesting, but what about the title. Isn’t this game called The Fast and the Furious?

“When we set out to do this game we really focused our efforts on three main goals,” Mitch informs us. The first goal, he says, was sense of speed. “You can’t have a game called The Fast and the Furious and be slow.

“I think that we really achieved that sense of speed. You can break over 200mph on the freeways in Japan (in the game), and it’s significantly fast. We’ve put it up against just about every other game out there and we compare comparably.”

Second, they focused on car customization. Mitch comments: “There are a lot of games out there that focus on customization. When we started doing this, we sat down [to discuss how it should be done] in ways that it has never been done.

“How are we going to take this in directions that are authentic and legitimate within the [drift racing] scene? There are a lot of games that focus on customization. They allow you to put on body kits, wheels, and things that you’d expect to be able to do. But it’s all fake. None of it is the same stuff that you will actually see.”

Though it’s no surprise that racing games embellish the rules a bit, it’s rare that a developer talks about this area so candidly. “If you look at the cars in the film [The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift], they’ve got body by Top Secret, body kits by Veilside. All of the rims are from Raze engineering. They’re real-life and legit kits, rims, and parts. This is something that was important to us. We didn’t want to have a game where all the customization is based on fictional or knock-off parts.” 

Number Three

Mitch Boyer: “The third thing that we went after was drifting. Obviously, with the release of the film, drifting is blowing up in mainstream awareness. Drifting has been something that the hardcore have been doing well over a decade in Japan. Now with the success of Formula D, with D1 Grand Prix coming to the United States, and with the release of Tokyo Drift, I think a lot of people who have never heard of drifting are going to be interested in what this can bring to a game.

“A lot of other games say that they’re drifting games or that they feature drifting, but they don’t. The drifting in those games is essentially sliding. You come up to a turn, you turn in and the car starts to rotate and slide. That’s not drifting. That’s one of the key distinctions that sets our game aside – we actually worked with professional drifters and professional tuners to include the actual techniques in the game. When you drift in The Fast and the Furious, you’re actually drifting.”

Take the Next Onramp

Obviously drifting is a huge part of the game. Of course, the developers realize that some players might want something else to do. Lucky for you this is not one of those titles where you’ll be ‘locked down’ to a particular style. “It’s a very open structure,” Mitch boasts, “where the entire game is set in and around the Tokyo Bay on a system of freeways me and Mike [Morishita, of the Namco Bandai Games production team] call ‘the hub.’ They’re based on real freeways that circle the Tokyo Bay.

“If you’re not someone who wants to drift there are plenty of other things to do. You navigate by actually driving around this network of freeways. Let’s say you want to go buy a Nissan. You drive there, on the freeway, and actually take an exit and go to the dealership. Once you buy that Nissan, if you want to modify it, you drive on the freeway and go to the particular shop for modifying that car.”

Mitch says that there are five different shops, each tied to a different type of racing. “Maybe you like American muscle cars. We’ve got a shop for that. Maybe you’re a Honda guy. Maybe you’re a drifter, well we’ve got West Co in the game, which is a professional shop in Japan. These are all different shops for different kinds of tuning.” 

The Hot Spot

Mitch Boyer: “There are different crews to race in the game. You can drive around this freeway and roll up on anyone you see and have a race on the spot, and take it from there. If you’re in the lead, you set the path. There’s no set track. There’s no set finish line. You take the race wherever you want to go. If you want to meet up with a bunch of racers who race with a certain style, you get off the freeway at what we call hotspots. These are places where racers gather. If you want to go drifting, you go up to the mountains and go to a mountain hotspot. If you want to go racing on the freeway, you get off at one of the hotspots, somewhere near the Tokyo Bay.

“You’re not locked down [once you’re at a hotspot]. You guys have played a lot of games in the customization and street racing genre. You know that a lot of time it’s a pretty locked down structure. You have to race this guy, then that guy, then that guy. It’s very linear. Real street racing isn’t like that. You race whoever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. And that’s exactly how it works in the game. So if you’re the guy with a Honda Civic, and you go up to a guy with a Skyline, you can call him out but you’re probably gonna lose. Part of the game is learning who to race and in what order, and bringing the right type of car to the right battle. If you take your front-wheel Honda in a drift battle you’re gonna lose ‘cause those cars aren’t good at drifting.”

Stick It

Mitch describes how the crew system works, and how you’ll exchange a little something after earning their respect. “There are 10 different racers: two crews of five, each with a boss. Once you beat a crew, then you earn the respect of the crew. How it works in Japan is: a lot of these crews who are cool with each other trade their stickers. Maybe there’s a crew called Speed the Night. Maybe there’s one, Daily Driven. If they respect each other, they’ll give their stickers to each other and they’ll run their stickers on their car.

“This is something we’ve turned into actual gameplay. When you defeat a crew, they’ll give you their sticker, and if you run it on their car, then whatever shop that crew is cool with… Let’s say you beat some drifters. They’ll give you their sticker. You put it on your car, and you go to the drift shop, now you get discounts on certain parts because they recognize that you’re cool with that crew.”

I Prefer The Brand Name

Mitch Boyer: “Because the film is set in Japan, because we’ve done likewise and set the game in Japan, this gives us the chance to offer people cars you don’t normally see in games like this. We have the ability to offer not only Japanese import cars: Nissan, Mitsubishi, Toyota (like you would expect). But also specifically JDM models. These are the models of cars that you see only in Japan on the streets that maybe aren’t sold here. But they’re really popular in the drift community, like the Nissan Sylvia S-15. The Toyota Chaser. Those are cars that were never sold in the United States, and now we’re giving players the chance to drive them in this game.

“We recognize that there are a lot of people out there who aren’t necessarily into Japanese import cars but are still going to want to play this game. The cool thing about The Fast and the Furious is that at its core, if you look at every Fast and the Furious movie, it’s always Japanese import cars versus American muscle cars. That enables us to brand out in that way as well. We’ve got classic American muscle cars, new American muscle cars like the Dodge Charger, Ford Mustang. We’ve got Saleens.”
 

Keep your browser pointed to GameZone Online for Part 2 of our interview with The Fast and the Furious production team.