Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Over the last 13 months I've been on a rollercoaster of emotions. When a new TXR game was announced, I couldn't believe it. It seemed too good to be true. When I saw later that Genki themselves had confirmed it, I was beyond hyped unlike any other game I had ever been looking forward to before. But when I saw that it was gonna be a Steam exclusive on PC, I was heartbroken. I don't have anything close to resembling a gaming PC, or Steam for that matter. This is nothing new to the TXR series though. TXR and TXR2 were exclusive to the Sega Dreamcast, TXR Zero and TXR3 were exclusive to the PS2, and Import Tuner Challenge was exclusive to the Xbox 360. And that was the last TXR game to ever come out, that was nearly 20 years ago, until now. I couldn't play it when the early access version released in January of last year, or even as the full release came out in September. But 2 months later it was announced that it would be coming to PS5 in February the following year and I was instantly pumped again. This marks the first time a TXR game has been released on more than one platform.
Because it's just called Tokyo Xtreme Racer, the same as the original from 1999, the TXR community calls it Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2025 to distinguish the two. So here we are now, launch day for the PS5 release, 10 am EST. I loaded it up the instant the pre-order countdown ended. I've waited over a year for this moment. Unlike most racing games that come out now, this one is massively popular as it has everything that made PS2/Xbox and early PS3/Xbox 360 era racing games so special. No micro transactions or mandatory online connection just to play the game. In fact this game is completely offline only, a huge rarity in this day & age. It's basically just a modern TXR game with today's graphics & performance capabilities, a true blast from the past. To add to the nostalgia, the majority of the music on here is just remixed versions of soundtracks from previous TXR games, mostly TXR Zero and TXR3. There’s 6 stages in this game and we're gonna clear all of them & take down all 457 rivals in the game to become king of Tokyo's expressways.
A bit of a disclaimer here, I've never attempted a blind playthrough like this before for a game that just came out & have never played before, but that's how excited I am to play it. Every other walkthrough I've done prior to this, I've beaten the game in question atleast once prior to making it. I'm already so invested in it that I'm willing to just wing it & hope for the best, knowing damn well that I don't know how long it's gonna take me to finish. I already have over 6 hours worth of footage recorded. I seriously have no clue how many parts this is gonna go on for. It could be 10 or it could be 100. And this is all despite the fact that my NFS Most Wanted 2012 playthrough is still in progress. But atleast that playthrough is already pre-recorded, it's just the editing that I need to do, half of which is already done. But that playthrough is being slowed way down as this is now my top priority & probably will be for a while. I'm gonna try to get one episode out a day if possible. On top of this being my first ever experience with this game, I selected "Challenge" for the perk tree restrictions which prevents you from far surpassing your rivals too quickly, and enabled "additional rules" before ever starting my first race for the hardest possible challenge, both of which could bite me in the ass later. Additional rules adds a water/oil temperature gauge that you have to manage while racing and your tires will still wear outside of battles, although at 25% of the rate they wear during battles. But you get a 50% bonus when you win battles, so it's a fair trade off.
As far as the TXR series goes, I'm a veteran of the series with close to 20 years under my belt understanding the games, cars, physics, mechanics, expressways, rivals, and even the lore that runs deep within this series. But with the release of something brand new, especially after it's been so long, even a hardcore veteran can feel like somewhat of a lost rookie, which I pretty much did for most of this first episode. Like I said we're just gonna wing it & hope we make the right choices. Only having my knowledge of past TXR games to rely on for guidance, hoping we can thrive in a game full of new rivals & new mechanics I've never seen before. It doesn't help that I've had my controller for over 3 years at this point and is now suffering badly from stick drift, which only hurts my driving. So if you see me at any point in this playthrough randomly hit a wall on a straightaway, now you know why. One things for certain, we have a hell of a learning curve ahead of us as we blaze our own trail in the underground world of modern day Tokyo highway battles.
Over the last 13 months I've been on a rollercoaster of emotions. When a new TXR game was announced, I couldn't believe it. It seemed too good to be true. When I saw later that Genki themselves had confirmed it, I was beyond hyped unlike any other game I had ever been looking forward to before. But when I saw that it was gonna be a Steam exclusive on PC, I was heartbroken. I don't have anything close to resembling a gaming PC, or Steam for that matter. This is nothing new to the TXR series though. TXR and TXR2 were exclusive to the Sega Dreamcast, TXR Zero and TXR3 were exclusive to the PS2, and Import Tuner Challenge was exclusive to the Xbox 360. And that was the last TXR game to ever come out, that was nearly 20 years ago, until now. I couldn't play it when the early access version released in January of last year, or even as the full release came out in September. But 2 months later it was announced that it would be coming to PS5 in February the following year and I was instantly pumped again. This marks the first time a TXR game has been released on more than one platform.
Because it's just called Tokyo Xtreme Racer, the same as the original from 1999, the TXR community calls it Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2025 to distinguish the two. So here we are now, launch day for the PS5 release, 10 am EST. I loaded it up the instant the pre-order countdown ended. I've waited over a year for this moment. Unlike most racing games that come out now, this one is massively popular as it has everything that made PS2/Xbox and early PS3/Xbox 360 era racing games so special. No micro transactions or mandatory online connection just to play the game. In fact this game is completely offline only, a huge rarity in this day & age. It's basically just a modern TXR game with today's graphics & performance capabilities, a true blast from the past. To add to the nostalgia, the majority of the music on here is just remixed versions of soundtracks from previous TXR games, mostly TXR Zero and TXR3. There’s 6 stages in this game and we're gonna clear all of them & take down all 457 rivals in the game to become king of Tokyo's expressways.
A bit of a disclaimer here, I've never attempted a blind playthrough like this before for a game that just came out & have never played before, but that's how excited I am to play it. Every other walkthrough I've done prior to this, I've beaten the game in question atleast once prior to making it. I'm already so invested in it that I'm willing to just wing it & hope for the best, knowing damn well that I don't know how long it's gonna take me to finish. I already have over 6 hours worth of footage recorded. I seriously have no clue how many parts this is gonna go on for. It could be 10 or it could be 100. And this is all despite the fact that my NFS Most Wanted 2012 playthrough is still in progress. But atleast that playthrough is already pre-recorded, it's just the editing that I need to do, half of which is already done. But that playthrough is being slowed way down as this is now my top priority & probably will be for a while. I'm gonna try to get one episode out a day if possible. On top of this being my first ever experience with this game, I selected "Challenge" for the perk tree restrictions which prevents you from far surpassing your rivals too quickly, and enabled "additional rules" before ever starting my first race for the hardest possible challenge, both of which could bite me in the ass later. Additional rules adds a water/oil temperature gauge that you have to manage while racing and your tires will still wear outside of battles, although at 25% of the rate they wear during battles. But you get a 50% bonus when you win battles, so it's a fair trade off.
As far as the TXR series goes, I'm a veteran of the series with close to 20 years under my belt understanding the games, cars, physics, mechanics, expressways, rivals, and even the lore that runs deep within this series. But with the release of something brand new, especially after it's been so long, even a hardcore veteran can feel like somewhat of a lost rookie, which I pretty much did for most of this first episode. Like I said we're just gonna wing it & hope we make the right choices. Only having my knowledge of past TXR games to rely on for guidance, hoping we can thrive in a game full of new rivals & new mechanics I've never seen before. It doesn't help that I've had my controller for over 3 years at this point and is now suffering badly from stick drift, which only hurts my driving. So if you see me at any point in this playthrough randomly hit a wall on a straightaway, now you know why. One things for certain, we have a hell of a learning curve ahead of us as we blaze our own trail in the underground world of modern day Tokyo highway battles.
