User:Agnescz/Touge King: the Spirits 2

Touge King: the Spirits 2 (峠KING・ザ・スピリッツ2) is a racing game for the Sega Saturn videogame console. It was developed by Cave and released by Atlus in Japan on April 18, 1997.

It is a sequel to Touge King: the Spirits (known as High Velocity – Mountain Racing Challenge in North America), and is the third game in Atlus’ Touge series.

It was never released outside of Japan.

Gameplay
Touge King: the Spirits 2 stays true to the one-on-one racing concept of its predecessor, but expands on it with a series of improvements and additional content. The game has four core gameplay modes instead of three. King Battle serves as the main mode, requiring players to participate in a series of one-on-one races (known as heats) around circuits made from Japanese mountain roads.

Free Battle is essentially a single heat mode, where the player races against a car of their choosing, while Vs. Battle allows for up to two players to race against each other using the game’s splitscreen mode.

Training mode offers three sub-modes: time attack and free driving, where players race against the clock; and dricon, where players are graded for their drifting skills. Two further modes, Magazine and Photo Contest, are available, but do not involve any driving.

There were other improvements, too. Although the game, as with its predecessor, only featured three circuits (which could be driven in either direction), players could customise the driving experience by selecting the season, time of day and even the weather.

The vehicle selection is also greater, numbering 20 vehicles as opposed to its predecessor’s six. Players start off with a basic selection of five cars, but can unlock further vehicles by beating rivals. As with High Velocity – Mountain Racing Challenge, the cars themselves are not licensed, but are designed to look like popular Japanese performance cars both from the time and from preceding decades.

Vehicles can also be customised in a number of ways, including the selection of different paint jobs and the application of performance-enhancing upgrades. Players can also edit the names of their cars.

The game is also compatible with the Saturn’s analogue controller.

Graphics
Compared to High Velocity – Mountain Racing Challenge, Touge King: the Spirits 2 features far more detailed car and circuit models, giving it a more up-to-date appearance. This added detail meant the game was no longer able to offer the same extra-long draw distances of its predecessor. As a result, draw-in was noticeable on some of the tracks. Although draw distances were still generally longer than was the case with many Saturn driving games of the period.

The game has twice the number of camera angles of its predecessor: two third-person views (one close up, the other high-and-behind), as well as cockpit and bumper cams.