Before Initial D and Project Gotham Racing, there was this.
Side by Side is the franchise for a popular 1990s touge racing game series whose name changed to Battle Gear in the 2000s. It was developed by Taito and was first released on arcade cabinets before being ported to the PlayStation home consoles. Battle Gear 2 is known as Tokyo Road Race in Europe.
See also Project Gotham Racing, the series' rough Western equivalent.
This work provides examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: The Tuned version of 4 introduces braking assist for automatic transmission, where the car brakes automatically before a tight corner. Very handful for beginners who want to tackle the expert courses with ease.
- Creator Provincialism: All the cars up to the third game (including the Side by Side games) were strictly Japanese. The fourth game broke this with foreign cars, although they were all hot hatches.
- Design-It-Yourself Equipment: In 3, the cars can have visual customization, but in 4, the customization extends to performance modifications. Though this is restricted to players who have NESYS keys and in 3, players who bought the home port.
- Diegetic Interface: Hell, even the interiors are somewhat detailed, if not today's standards. But in early days of racing games, it was outstanding.
- Grand Finale:
Word of God has said the 4 is the final entry in the series. - Gratuitous English: The Battle Gear 2 theme. BATERU GIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAH~
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Nintendo Hard: Obviously Drift Modes in the fourth game.- Also, the more-complex Professional cabinets of the same game.
- Takumi Mode in 3 Tuned is also this. (see Video Game Cruelty Punishment)
- Well, the series was meant to emulate the real-life driving physics, so it can be hard for many gamers.
- Added in 4 Tuned is a Harder Than Hard version of manual transmission. Which now uses an H-Pattern gearbox and requiring the clutch to shift gears.
- Nitro Boost: Available as an upgrade in 4 for cars with non-turbo engines. It is essentially the non-turbo counterpart to the turbocharged engine's over-boost function.
- Product Placement: Lots.
- Revenue-Enhancing Devices: The NESYS keys. You can get one for free once you bought the PlayStation 2 port of 3. Sadly, the keys designed for 3 cannot be used on 4, prompting players to use different keys designed for that game instead.
- Shout-Out: In 3, you can select quite a few Initial D cars with all their appropriate colors.
- In 4, there are few racing tracks modeled after real-life race tracks, like Circuit de Monaco.
- In 4, there are few racing tracks modeled after real-life race tracks, like
- Updated Re-release: Tuned versions of 3 and 4. Before that, Side by Side 2 had the Evoluzione and Evoluzione RR versions.
- The PlayStation exclusive Side by Side Special 2000 is this to the original Side by Side Special, which includes all tracks and cars from the two Side by Side games.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: The Takumi Mode in the 3 Tuned forces you to stay off the walls. Even so much as touching it nets you a TIME PENALTY.
