Import Tuner Challenge

To feed my Forza Motorsport 2 hunger, I decided to purchase this game. I'm a big fan of Japanese cars. All my cars are Japanese. Import Tuner focuses on...you guessed it...import cars, mainly Japanese brand cars- Toyota, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Mazda, and Nissan. People ask..so where's Honda? Licensing issues prevented Genki developers from including Honda.

This game delivers TONS of customizations. You can basically calibrate and modify your car based on parts you buy. However, buying upgrade parts for your car isn't that easy. All upgrade parts are level-based meaning you need to beat a boss or win races against a few rival teams to get a new level of parts to purchase. Parts don't come cheap so just racing one rival after another won't get you the goods you need once you face a fully-modified car. You'll have to go back and find a rival team you already beat and race him over and over until you get enough credit points to purchase the parts.

The game...Read more

This game has recieved absolutely no hype. I walked into EB a few days before the game's release to preorder, and no one there had even heard of it. Usually when that happens, a game has been rushed through development, is released prematurely, and as a result, the game blows.

That is not the case here.

Import Tuner Challenge is effectively the next in the line of Shutokou Battle or Tokyo Xtreme Racer (henceforth referred to as TXR) games. However, it's received a change of name, and was produced by Ubisoft instead of Crave. This has led to a few minor changes to the game. First off, this looks MUCH better than any of the previous TXR games. It won't blow a game like Test Drive Unlimited out of the water, but it's certainly a step up from NFS:MW or Ridge Racer 6. The streets of Tokyo are beautifully recreated here. The cars are well-rendered, all high-poly models. The lighting effects are up there with the best of the racing games. As far as sound...Read more

This game is made by the same company that produced the Tokyo Extreme Racer series. The game play is exactly like TXR, expect the controls are a little bit tighter than they were in the previous installments of the game. The graphics in the game are very well done, but they are not next gen graphics. There is only about 10 or so cars in the game but hundreds of upgrades. The level of customization is unbeleiveable. You can cusotmize every thing from the height of the car to what the steering wheel look like. The reason I rated the game 5 starts is because the game is so much fun to play. There is no story line in the game; the main focus is to race and beat all of your rivals. All of the reviews that compare this game to Need for Speed: Underground are very misleading because Import tuner is totally different than NFSU. NFSU is an arcade sim aimed at the mass market where Import tuner is aimed at a small niche of racing fans.
If you have ever played any of TXR series...Read more