#2 - January 2025 - Racing Lagoon
So I spent like a week sitting on a draft of my ZakuAku post that I put off editing for no real reason other than I went "ah, wait, putting words on the internet is scary" even though this was always intended to be just a random fun side hobby to ramble about any neat things I played. Oops.
During that time I played Racing Lagoon. If you're not familiar with it, it's a HIGH SPEED DRIVING RPG from Square that came out in 1999 in Japan.
If you're a SaGa fan like I am, you'll recognize the name Akitoshi Kawazu, the producer for Racing Lagoon. Some of the tutorials even mention Final Fantasy or SaGa Frontier by name, humorously enough--did you know having too much weight on your car is like how Gustave XIII was weighed down by all his steel equipment? Or that the 'power' on your car is kind of like the strength stat in Final Fantasy? It's a little silly seeming, but as someone who doesn't know one bit about cars, I appreciated it.
The lovely folks at Hilltop Works translated this back in November 2021. You've probably seen some funny screenshots here and there of some of the terminology the game uses back when the translation first came out--when you beat a rival racer, you don't just claim a part from their car, you "Get REWARDS" from them. You're not modifying your car, you're going into the "Machine COMPLETE" menu with it its further "Chassis COMPLETE" and "Engine COMPLETE" menus and so on. is, in many ways, a deeply silly game, and I say that with nothing but affection in my heart. Those terms are in the original script too, just to be clear.
I just really had to include this picture here regarding what the save points in the game are because it's so perfect. Of course, Gas Station and Game Save. Of course... nodding sagely
But seriously, the game is just sort of fascinating. It is truly a high speed driving RPG. After an intro race where you can either win or lose--don't ask me how long it took to beat it, thank you--you have free rein to drive around South Yokohama, where there's easily a dozen locations that all have dialogue for visiting them that shed some more light on some less important characters or some of the other street racing teams. Most of these are completely optional, although some do reward you either with more optional cutscenes in the future, or occasionally rare and unique parts for your car. Sometimes they lead to unique, one-off races that if you don't see on a particular night, they're gone for good.
And given that the game has quite a few nights that it takes place over, and many of these locations have new events on most nights.. it's surprisingly dense.
There's even a couple of characters who barely exist if you're skipping visiting side areas in favor of plot progression, interestingly enough. I don't think that's a bad thing, but it did briefly startle me when I was looking at a guide afterwards and realized I basically completely missed out on an entire gang of racers.
The protagonist, Sho Akasaki, is exceptionally funny in that he starts the game as your kind of "what are these dweebs getting so fired up about, this is just to kill time, it's just a race, jeez" sorta guy who doesn't even know about the Get REWARDS system (how silly!) and doesn't really get street racing at first.
That is, of course, until he has one good race and gets his first little thrill, that feeling of his hands shaking while holding on tight to the steering wheel, the sensation that he's roasting alive in his car and needs to open the windows just to get some fresh air, the realization that in that moment, nothing matters but the finish line. And with that, it's suddenly no longer just a little street race.
Honestly, I'm not really a racing game player myself, by which I mean I'm awful at them, and that desire to just WIN ended up hitting oddly close to home for me as I improved my car and progressed through the game. Constantly upgrading your car, seeing its max power output continually go up, feeling the turning and drifting get ever so slightly better... it got me real good.
Here's a little comparison of what you can expect to see from the start of the game to the end.
Humble beginnings...
.. into a monster that re-accelerates from a tiny bump and goes rocketing right off again at top speed. Really, I had a hard time controlling it sometimes... but, even so, I'm nodding right along with Sho as I understood a little bit of that same thrill his first race gave him, blazing through racetracks all throughout Yokohama and beyond as my car got better and better, forever chasing that elusive concept of speed, constantly barreling towards the finish line and throwing all caution to the wind.
This is leaving out all the times I slammed my car into walls like an idiot, of course. Thankfully, you can't damage your car.
When I restarted the game just to grab that picture above of what Sho's default car had equipped, I was even able to beat the intro race on my first try... it almost brings a tear to my eye that I got a tiny bit better by the end.
Anyway, the main plot revolves around the team Bay Lagoon Racing early on, led by your senior, a man by the name of Ikki Fujisawa. Ikki is a legendary street racer himself and is seen as one of the successors of the "Yokohama's Fastest" legend, which is a recurring plot point in the game--what even happened with the original Yokohama's Fastest, ten years ago? Who will be the next one to properly inherit that title? Why is everyone so fanatically insistent on that damn title, anyway? ... And what are these mysterious events that seem to start happening when racers get too close to the legend of Yokohama's Fastest?
I will mention that there is a very handy guide on GameFAQs that has plot summaries for every story cutscene in the game, if you're curious but don't think you can handle actually playing the game. (Give it a shot at least once anyway, though...!)
Honestly, it's a game that just has a particularly melodramatic presentation that I really love for reasons I'm not sure I can properly convey. There's something about the fact that basically over 90% of the game's run-time is all during the night time, presented with occasionally bizarre choices of camera angles, the characters themselves are sometimes animated extremely awkwardly and stiffly (repeated hand gestures with 2-3 frames of animation that occupy a large part of the screen, etc), and most of the lighting is just store signs and whatever other ambient lights from other buildings... there's just a mood there. Cities at night are just neat, I guess, made all the better when it's the backdrop for people waxing poetic about street racing.
There's constant chatter about the concept of street racing and what it means to the various racers who make up the major teams. How badly do you want to win? Would you be willing to drive so fast, so recklessly that you could die for it? Who has what it takes to even pretend to compete at the title of Yokohama's Fastest? Are you only satisfied if you're pushing yourself beyond your human limits to go as fast as possible? Who are your teammates to you? Are they really your friends, or just deadweight you'd easily let go of if they can't keep up? Street racing basically is life for a lot of the racers, and the daytime is just an unpleasant, undesired break from the only thing that matters.
All of that aside, it's a reasonably long game too. My save clocked in around 25 hours and that was with mainly focusing on the main story and trying to see side events whenever possible. In reality, there's also 75 Unofficial Races, or "UORs" in the game which all have various gimmick rules. Some may demand you use a truck or bus body. Some may demand you use a chassis that is 4-wheel drive. Others may require your car to be above or below a certain weight, or that it has a certain number of turbos, and so on and so forth. Many of these reward you with yen, others may provide rare parts. These are generally optional, although for various reasons, you'll still have to do some of them to complete the game. Personally, I didn't do most of them since I was mainly interested in the story.
And outside of that, there's even random encounters... sort of. While driving through Yokohama, you might see cars rapidly flashing their headlights. Drive into one, and you'll get thrown into a short, one lap race against that car, with the track being accurate to where you encountered them on the map. Lose, and they'll take a part from your car via the Get REWARDS system. Win, and you'll earn some RP (Racing Points), your car's Engine, Chassis, and Body will gain experience, and you can then use your banked RP to Get REWARDS from their car. Every night in the game has its own pool of encounters, with some rarer than others, and some sporting some incredibly strong and rare parts for you to acquire.
This, combined with leveling up your car's main components to add more parts (level up your engine? More slots for turbos. Level up your chassis? More room for add-ons like suspension, lighter tires, a nav system that weighs the car down but warns you on the screen about upcoming turns...) means that getting into random street races all the time is actually pretty dang rewarding. At the end of the day, it's still a High Speed Driving RPG, and you can absolutely out-skill some races by farming or grinding better parts.
Plus, of course, it's a good way to familiarize yourself with racetracks you may be facing more serious racers on for plot stuff since many plot races, or even one-off races from optional events, take place on the same tracks you'll do random encounters on. I'm pretty sure I'm still bad at the game, but on the other hand, after 20+ hours of lots and lots of races and continually learning to adjust to my car's new specs as I improved it, I sure got a lot more familiar with the tracks which does help a whole bunch.
All in all, while I don't think this will do what Ace Combat did to me with the AC series and give me the urge to suddenly go play a bunch of other driving games--I'm not even sure how many could even hit the same vibes as Racing Lagoon, but it's a genre I'm honestly totally unfamiliar with--it's a fantastic ride nevertheless.
I still don't know a damn thing about cars, though, to be completely honest. Sorry.