Getting “Fast” and “Furious” With Namco Bandai’s New Racer, Part 2

by Louis Bedigian

“To maintain the drift you have to balance throttle and counter-steer angle. We give the players as much feedback as we could to do that.”

If you tuned in last time in Part 1 of this interview, you’ll know that The Fast and the Furious is home to a massive, persistent environment, features tons of licensed vehicles, and has a strong presence within the drifting community. But there’s one thing you might not be aware of: the concept cars.

“We worked with the manufacturers to get a hold of cars that no one’s ever really seen before,” said Mitch Boyer of the Namco Bandai Games production team. “All said and done we’re talking about 100 cars, which is an amazing amount to choose from, especially when you pair it off with the amount of customization that’s open to each car.”

What will it take to acquire the game’s most alluring vehicles?

 “The concept cars are cost prohibitive. Because they’re these amazing cars, you’re not going to have enough money to buy them from the outset. Second of all, as you progress through the game, more and more cars are going to become available at the various dealerships that are spread throughout the Tokyo Bay. We don’t just have one dealership with all the cars – we physically have different locations to represent each manufacturer.

“We’re one of the only games in this genre to feature Honda. Honda is a pretty conservative company. You don’t see them in a lot of games that are played outside of a track environment. Honda wants, for the most part, to focus on the motorsport kinds of games, with a closed circuit, car classes, [and] rules. You don’t usually see games with Honda in them when you’re weaving through traffic at 200mph. We’ve been really lucky to involve them as well.” 

Drifting Its Own Path

Mitch had a lot to say regarding the topic of another drift title, D1 Grand Prix.

“Mike [Morishita, of the Namco Bandai Games production team] and I have been friends with the D1 team for a few years now,” he says. “We know those guys very well. Hats off to them. We’re pretty fond of what they’re doing, and we think they’re pretty fond of what we’re doing. It’s a very friendly relationship between the two of us. We actually helped recommend to them that in the newest version of the game they should involve the American drifters. If you go back and play any of their import versions of D1GPs from years past, there were only Japanese D1 drivers. Mike and I recommended that if they wanted to be successful in the US market that they should involve the US drifters as well. We even put them in contact with some of those drivers.”

While the developers at Yukes (makers of D1GP) and Namco Bandai are close, Mitch wanted gamers to know that there are some significant differences between the two games.

“First of all, D1GP is sanctioned drifting. It has qualifying rounds, top 16, it’s regulated. Our game is a touge-style drifting. [Note: Touge is Japanese for ‘mountain pass.’] First and foremost, that’s a major distinction. Ours takes place on a mountain. Theirs takes place on closed courses. They do a run that has two or three turns, maybe four, then they’re done. So you play for maybe 15 seconds, then that’s it. The way it works in our game is that you run the whole touge. Our game is entirely based on the touge when it comes to drifting. This is a series of maybe 20 corners, maybe more, that’s run uphill or downhill. A lot of the sanctioned drifting takes placed on either banked ovals or flat courses. It’s not uphill or downhill. That affects gameplay as well.”

But, Mitch says, despite the necessity to point out the distinctions between the two titles, he is in no way denying what Yukes has created. “We don’t want to take anything away from what Yukes is doing. D1GP is a great game. We love it. But I think that what we’ve done in terms of our drifting model [is make] it broader.” 

“I think that the game does benefit from being involved with Universal’s film (you’ll see cars and locations from the movie), but first and foremost it’s a racing game.”—Mitch Boyer 

Anyone who’s played D1GP knows that it’s a hardcore title built specifically for drifting enthusiasts. Not necessarily gamer enthusiasts, but for the people who are really a part of the drifting community.

“If you’re good at it, you’re good at it,” Mitch comments. “If you’re not, you’ll throw your controller down and break it. What we’ve done is work with the actual drifting community and said, ‘How is it that you’re going to know when your car is going to lose it? At what point do you know – what kind of feedback do you get?’”

Mitch says that other racing games don’t give you feedback. But “in a real car, when you’re sideways, you can feel how much traction you have. You can feel the Gs on your body, you know when you’re gonna lose.”

Thus the creation of a new system called the Drift Indicator. “As soon as you initiate a drifting technique, it shows you the angle of your drift. It takes into account the angle, speed, throttle, and counter-steer position. When you’re giving it too much throttle it will tell you. You’ll have a spin warning that will pop up and say ‘Too much gas!’ If you don’t ease up you’re gonna lose it. So we’re giving players that kind of feedback, immediately, to how much gas is needed to balance out the drift. To maintain the drift you have to balance throttle and counter-steer angle. We give the players as much feedback as we could to do that.”

And just incase you’re not the most experienced player around, The Fast and the Furious also provides players with driver assistance. “If you’re a hardcore guy, and you know all these techniques already, you turn off the assists and jump right in. But if you’re a casual player – you’ve never drifted before, you don’t know anything about drifting. What we don’t want to do is throw you into the deep end. A lot of games are really hardcore from the outset, and that just throws players into the deep end. They say, ‘Okay, go drift Billy!’ There’s no learning curve for the player. So what we’ve done is, you have an assist that you can turn on, which will help the player to counter-steer and keep them from spinning while still feeling natural. We also have a series of real-world tutorials to help teach you all these techniques.” 

“It’s not a mission-based game where you go to the corner store, pick up some milk and come back. At the end of the day it’s about racing, and it stands on its own.”—Mitch Boyer

Drifting 101

To this day people are still drifting in the mountains. No matter how tempting that may be, it’s not the safest way to get your thrills. As such, Gary McKinney recommends that you keep it on the track. “The tracks are the best place,” he says. “It’s not dangerous as long as we keep it on course. On certified tracks it’s actually very safe. You’re at well enough speeds, and there’s fire and rescue there. Most cars are not going so fast that we’re going to have to worry about it. Your car’s not gonna flip over, nothing like that.

“We have competitions now where we’re on a pre-determined course. We have guidelines where you have to meet entry speeds into the corners, the angle of the vehicle, and actual crowd appeal. There’s actually a point for that.

“We’ll do single rounds for qualifying. Then we will go into tandem. In tandem sections, we are basically one out front and one behind. The guy behind has to follow the guy in front but out-drift him. By out-drifting we mean staying right next to him, better angles, more smoke, more crowd appeal, which determines who wins in our competition mode.”

Lastly, Gary gave his opinion on The Fast and the Furious. “The first thing is that the game is really realistic. Mitch and Mike worked really hard to make the cars react the way we really drive them. That was a key thing. Seeing how the cars adjust to clutch kicking and e-braking was unbelievable. It looked exactly how we do it in our real cars. I think the game is going to broaden everyone’s [view] on how hard drifting is, but then again how fun it is. This is something a lot of people can do on the weekends, and not just at a pro level.” 

“When we actually talked to people in the automotive press about what we’ve been doing with the game, they’ve been pretty stunned.”—Mitch Boyer

Fast Answers

Have you settled on a soundtrack yet? If so, is it composed or licensed music, and could you tell us what we can expect form the individual songs?

Mitch Boyer: The soundtrack is very close to the feel of [what you hear] in the film. We worked pretty closely with Universal from the outset to get a feeling for what they were going for. Music is one of the last things that is determined in the production of a film. But early on they were very communicative of what genre[s], what types of music, what look and feel, so we captured that. Because the game is set in Japan, those of you who are familiar with the [country] will be instantly immersed in the music. There’s a lot of Japanese pop, a lot of Japanese hip-hop, there’s rock, electronic, there’s all the music that you would expect to hear from people who actually do this in the scene.

You talk about concept cars. Have we seen any of them before – have any of them been unveiled at the auto shows that took place this year?

MB: Yeah, in fact they have. I can give a few examples. Specifically from Mitsubishi, any of you guys who are Evo fans will know the Sportback concept, and the concept X. Both of these are concept cars that could lead to the development of the Evo 10. Any Evo fan out there is going to be really happy to see those cars in the game.

Also we’ve got the Lexus LF-C concept car, which a lot of people are thinking might be the evolution of the IS series. We’ve got the Lexus LFA, which is Lexus’s $100,000 supercar. [That car is] going to go head-to-head with the exotics.

Is there going to be a significant gameplay difference between car models?

MB: Oh yeah. There are stat differences, and using Evo as an example, the 2003 Evo puts down 271 horsepower, whereas the 2005 puts down around 286. So there are performance difference between each of the models.

Not only that, but the customization on the cars sometimes varies from model to model. If you buy a 2004 Evo RS, or a 2006 Evo 9, there might be different body kits that are available for those different trim levels and models. So there are reasons to own more than one version. There are reasons to own all those different trim levels. The RS, for example, is a light Evo. So if you go and buy that version the weight will actually be lighter than the other Evos and you’ll get a performance benefit as a result.