Tokyo Xtreme Racer is blowing up on Steam, and we can see why

The turn of the millennium, eh? Good times. Not the subtlest era for street car modifications, but certainly one immortalised by a string of wonderful Need For Speed Underground releases that seemed to tap into a bigger zeitgeist. Tokyo Xtreme Racer knows this, and has ruthlessly exploited our collective nostalgia for the underglow neon era in a manner that Steam Early Access users are pretty psyched about.

Since the Early Access version released on Steam on 23 January, the game’s amassed over 7,000 reviews and currently sits at an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ user rating. It’s doing something right, then.

In a near-future Tokyo, whose roads have been conveniently closed off to anyone except street racers, you bomb about in tuners with outrageous colour schemes, flashing your lights at rival drivers and entering duels with them.

Tokyo’s Shuto Expressway has been recreated on the world map, as have a number of choice vehicles including a Nissan Skyline GTR V-Spec II, a Mazda RX-7 Type-R 2, Supras, Imprezas and more. Can you whack dirty great spoilers on them? You can. Are there bonnet scoops and gratuitous vents to add? There are. And are there gaudy paint colours and vinyls to make your custom motor look just the right side of absolutely disgusting. Yes. Confirmed.

This is an Early Access game, so as ever, the initial release is pretty barebones and developer Genki Co says it plans to spend about four months before a 1.0 release gathering community feedback.

You can play the earliest build right now though via its Steam page. We certainly will be.