Densha de D 電車でD

Just stumbled across an amazing mashup of Densha de Go and Initial D, called Densha de D 電車でD. Initially released in 2010 you can drive (and DRIFT) trains as fast as you can and it's drawn in the manga style of Initial D. There were subsequent updates to it with improved graphics.

For those who didn't realize, Densha de Go is a train driving simulator where you drive an actual JR train on Yamanote line. Originally released in the arcade with real train controls, it's a really hard and tedious game to keep speed but not exceed the speed limit and stop on the marks as the station. Sounds easy but was very trick. Initial D is a cult Japanese Car Drifting/Racing anime in the mountains of Japan which I grew up with as a kid.

Here is a a playthrough of what it feels like to play this game. You have to control your speed to not derail.

After posting this, I dug deeper into the hole, I found that there's a whole comic book series that this is based on, that's why there are manga frames in the game.

The reason I stumbled across this was I saw someone post about a train drifting game on threads and some of the comments mentioned how it was Densha de D. A vibe coded version of this game again with real data, stations and buildings would be amazing.