Initial D Arcade Stage

A popular series of competitive racing games for the arcades by Sega, based on the manga and anime series Initial D.

Currently the latest installment of the series is Initial D Arcade Stage 6 AA. There also have been a few console releases, though in Japan only: Initial D Special Stage for the Play Station 2 (based on Initial D Arcade Stage Ver.2), and Initial D Extreme Stage for the PlayStation 3 (based on Initial D Arcade Stage 4).

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These games provide examples of:

• Battle Aura: Get enough wins and you'll get one, with the color changing as you get more wins. If you have the second-to-best aura, a white aura, and get enough consecutive wins, you'll earn a rainbow aura. Break your win streak and it reverts back to white. However, this, along with other features, has disappeared from the English-language version of 4.
  • 6AA brought this back (level the card up enough to get them), but you still have to play online mode to get two of the top auras.
• Bonus Boss: Bunta challenges you to a free battle after clearing one loop of Legend Of The Streets mode. Whether you win or not, the credits will roll afterwards.
• Difficulty Spike: Tsukuba in 4 and 5 goes from "fairly nice and easy" in sections 1 and 2 (assuming you're going outbound) to "Oh Crap what the hell is this" in sections 3 and 4.
• Easy Mode Mockery: Using automatic transmission on most tracks won't get you record times. The game's AT doesn't shift at the ideal shifting points either.
  • Worse yet, if you're using a card, you can only change transmission on card renewal, which is every 50 plays. In Initial D 4 and 5, you pay to change transmission, which makes more sense from a realistic point of view but is still kinda annoying.
• Extremity Extremist: The Hachi-roku's forte is downhill racing. The RX-7's forte is uphill racing.
• Final Boss: Takumi, in every single Arcade Stage installment.
• Genre Popularizer: Though not the first of its kind by a long stretch, it's the game that brought the multiplayer arcade racing game scene to competitive levels on a worldwide scale.
• Green Hill Zone: Myogi in Initial D Arcade Stage, Lake Akina in 4 and 5, Usui joins in in 6AA.
• Jack of All Stats: The Lancer EVO and Subaru Impreza are both newbie-friendly and can take on all tracks in any orientation decently... just don't expect to set course records.
• Joke Car: The AE85 Levin; averted that performance-wise it is not really that different than the others.
  • Some skilled players capitalize on its reputation, though.
• Nintendo Hard: Bunta Challenge in ver. 2 and 3.
• Player Preferred Pattern: In Ver. 2, everybody and their brother drove a Honda Integra Type R (DC2) and chose Irohazaka (usually Downhill) ad nauseum for every multiplayer match.
• Recurring Boss: Takumi in Legend Of The Streets Mode. He first appears as a Warmup Boss on Myougi (Ver. 1-3) or Lake Akina (4 and 5), then later he races you for real on Akina, then he becomes a Final Boss on the last course of the game.
  • In 6AA's Legend arc, Takumi can still be considered this since he is consistently on the higher level of difficulty while the other racers (Rin, Ryousuke, even Bunta) is not.
• Rubber Band AI: The "boost" feature. Often turned off in human vs. human matches.