Hi there everybody. It's me, Takenaka, programmer for the Wangan project.

As I write this article here in Japan, it's right in the middle of "autumn excursion" season, so I took my first (unsteady) drive in ages out towards Yamanashi.
It reminded me that cars are good for more than just tearing around a circuit - going for a nice relaxing drive can be fun too.

On the work front, Wangan Maxi 3DX is just about to be released, and all the project members are running about like crazy. We've been doing a lot of what we call "Debug Play" recently to check that the game is functioning correctly. As part of the debug play, the Wangan staff had a Time Attack Competition.

The rules were: a) race on Nagoya Speed Ring and b) use a normal car. Because in any case we have to check that Time Attack Mode is working correctly, we decided to make an event of it and have all the team members race and debug together.

And the prize for this competition? A grilled eel to the winner!! In comparison to Story Mode and some of the other modes, Time Attack can seem kind of plain, but to the sore losers on the Wangan Team, this was not a competition to be taken lightly, and we were all trying to find out where and how to reduce our times and which car types are the fastest.

The races were pretty intense towards the end, and some of them were won by a mere 0.1 seconds or so. It was nice to get a little chance to relax during this busy season ()

I've actually always liked Time Attack, but through playing with a normal car instead of the usual full tuning I discovered a new kind of enjoyment in this mode. Because the normal cars are quite easy to use, you make fewer mistakes, which in turn makes the races pretty close. As the overall speed is lower, you take different lines than you would with full tuning, and this gives you another way to enjoy the game.

The usual image of Time Attack is that it is a Spartan mode, fit for hard-liners. But if you play like we did, you can have some fun but close-fought battles - I recommend you give it a try!

OK, see you later!

(Original article in Japanese released on 11.26.2008)