JDM: Rise of the Scorpion is a tuner’s dream game

Japanese cars, streets, and drifting

In the early 2000s, the Need For Speed Underground series was one of the most influential games in shaping a generation of car enthusiasts. Now, a similarly designed game looks like it will usher in a new batch of young kids when it comes to Japanese car culture and drifting.

There’s a recently released game on Steam called JDM: Rise of the Scorpion. As the name suggests, it’s all about Japanese cars drifting in Japanese streets, complete with all the car customizations you can only see from Japanese car culture.

The game is a prologue to the full game called Japanese Drift Master – created by Polish developer Gaming Factory.

Much like Need For Speed Underground, you have kilometers of roads and locations to freely roam around. But of course, the graphics are bang up to date along with things like dynamic weather, day and night cycles, as well as familiar Japanese vehicles roaming around to serve as traffic while you spend hours cruising around.

The location is set in a fictional prefecture in Japan with a lake and a mountainside, which makes obvious references to Initial D and Mount Akina, which are based off Mount and Lake Haruna. Speaking of which, the storyline is even told in Manga style. 

In terms of car customization, most of the things you love about aftermarket tuning are there. Things such as widebody kits, wild graphics, aftermarket bucket seats and shift knobs are included in the list of customizable parts. For car choices, there’s not much to choose yet apart from an unlicensed Nissan 350Z (we wonder where the reference came from… *ehem* Tokyo Drift), as well as other RWD cars like the Corolla AE85 Levin, Subaru BRZ, and the Mazda Miata.

We could go further in detail with how the game works, but we think you’d be better off playing the game to see for yourself. After all, it’s free to download on Steam. Just make sure your gaming hardware’s up to the task.