Another PERFECT Sega Racing Game! Initial D Arcade Stage Ver. 3

I absolutely love Sega arcade racing games and I love Dreamcast and Sega NAOMI...so you KNOW I am going to love Inidial D Arcade Stage Ver. 3! There are so many amazing Initial D video games but in the retro gaming space Initial D Ver 3 is hands down my favorite Sega NAOMI racing game. NAOMI has a ton of retro games but for a Sega racing game...this is the best NAOMI game for me personally. Sadly its NOT one of the best Dreamcast games ever though...since it never got a port! It's the Daytona USA of the Initial D universe (and its sometimes also called Initial D Arcade Stage Version 3)
It really makes you wonder...what if the Dreamcast was successful?
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It's been almost three years since I looked at the Sega NAOMI which is just wild...but its going to be a VERY Sega retro games 2024 here on the channel! Because for as much of a retro gaming champ the Dreamcast was...the Sega NAOMI was just as good and in many ways better! I mean it is Sega arcade based after all!
Just don't expect Daytona USA, Scud Race or Sega Rally...as that already happened back in 2023! Check the playlists!
But the Sega NAOMI series of arcade boards are filled to the bring with some of the best arcade games of all time...as well as some Sega Hidden Gems!
Patreon Thanks: Seth Peterson, John Thompson, Paul Daniel, Porch, Jon Anderson, RayceARoni, Kurangui, Jason Hixon, Alex Tessler, Jonathan Leung, Martin Donlon, Tom Van Deusen, Barabob, Steve Randall, Ahab, K-2, Renaissance 2K, Ivar Wennerholm, Adrien Sebbane,
tobemorecrazy, Mike Puelinckx, Tony Escobar, H7, Humanoide70, Ben Parfitt, Holder Schmidt, Tim Lehner, Shad Uttam, Dan L, James Mann, Richard Schneider, Coupon Joe, Sunder Raj, Dorfus the Maple Syrup Man, John Booty and Craig M!
and the best part is you can use the Flycast emulator to play the arcade original if you don't have an original arcade PCB!
or you can do it via Sega Dreamcast emulation. I have a Dreamcast emulator tutorial here: • Dreamcast on Steam Dec...
Questions? Comments? Just leave them below and I will do my best to answer each and every one of them!
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VGE
#retrogaming #retrogamer #retrogames #arcade #arcadegames #arcadegame #emulator #emulation #sega #gaming #gamingcommunity #gaminghistory #arcadegaming #initiald #racinggames #racinggame

[@hadoke]

Oh man, this game. Back in 2004 I worked at a movie theater and Bandai-Namco was hired to redo our entire arcade section. They filled it with all kinds of crazy shit. A boxing game that you played with gloves, Tekken 5, Sol Cal 3 and a bunch of classics and this game. We had a 4 player link up and it ended up attracting quite the crowd. Everyone was lining to play it.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

That sounds like a legit good time!

[@DonChickoPlay]

this game always reminds me Tokyo extreme racer 2 😭 on dreamcast

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I always forget that one exists for some reason

[@TeamPandory]

You're doing yourself a disservice of not watching at least series one of initial d anime. There's a lot to it, much more than a race, it's a full blown drama. One of my favourite of all time. 😂🎉

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Haha one of these days. I need more time

[@PopeTheRevXXVIII]

@@VideoGameEsoterica as a film maker you should at least step in the Anime kiddy pool. Initial D included a lot of Western media

[@jiijijjijiijiij]

Agreed on watching the first season specifically. It works very well as a self contained storyline with a beginning, middle, and end. The following seasons are enjoyable if you have the time but if anything they feel line bonus content after the core story that makes up the first season.

[@PopeTheRevXXVIII]

@@jiijijjijiijiij i think the Follow up seasons are a different studio too

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I’ll have to try sometime

[@RaptorZX3]

Fun fact, if you play against somebody else in the arcade, both have to hold the brake pedal to disable the speed boost before a 1vs1 race. And for those Initial D maniacs, if speed boost isn't disabled, when they notice you get a speed boost because you're behind, they WILL say outloud "SPEED BOOST! SPEED BOOST!!" like you're cheating or something.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

This I never knew

[@moes95]

​@@VideoGameEsotericawmmt had the same mechanic if all players press brake (up to 4) catchup mechanic/handicap for 1st place rubber band for last is disabled too.

[@blastproc_dj]

Ver.3 was the last time this game was even a challenge. I remember playing this at my local arcade and the more difficult courses were a hell of an arm workout.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

That wheel will fight you sure sure

[@ZeonicFreak]

This is my arcade game now and forever. I've been fortunate enough to own a real Ver. 3 in my garage from a local arcade place that left alot of over stock when they moved locations and got it from the guy who had what was left of the arcades there at a really good price. I got a version 1 but upgraded to Ver. 3. The arcade is like having that project car that sits in the garage, but I get a lot of cars in one package in a sense. I've had to buy parts for the arcade here and there over the past 10 years second hand since getting anything new is near impossible. I had to buy two card readers to get one working to see if my cards still worked nearly 20 years later and alas they still did to my surprise. I've sense taken my machine out of my garage for a local game night I host once a year for my church using this arcade and other video game systems ive collected over the years for people to come over and just have fun with my stuff. There's a working Ver 2 at a barcade in Asheville (as of now) ill go to once in a while and just get the best times from people on those machines. I played the heck out of this in high school in the early/mid 2000's and fell in love with the Initial D series through the manga and anime. I did a panel at Anime Weekend Atlanta back in 2021 about Initial D where my tiny room was packed to the rim with people and I just spouted over an hour everything I knew about drift culture and Initial D and I had people say it was one of their best panels at that con. There's alot I can say about Initial D, and I should probably do that panel at a con again at some point in the future. Great video!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Fun cab to have. Bet that takes up a tiny bit of space

[@darktetsuya]

oh hell yeah this game! lived near a bowling alley just up the street and they had an IDV3 machine, definitely sank several tokens into it! thankful for the little magnetic cards that saved your progress though. a few years ago I found a pretty good deal on a Japanese PS2 and half a dozen loose games, and the home port of IDAS was one of them so I had to pull the trigger on it! yeah would not recommend tempting fate with the eurobeat I know how avex can be about that sorta thing. fun game for sure but some of the later races can be super challenging! still one of my top arcade racers ever.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s a solid port. Not NAOMI 2 good but still good

[@aaronreyes796]

love this game! i played thousand of hours initial d street stage on psp, amazing controls and graphics for a portable machine

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Thousands? That’s a lot haha

[@Charlie-Cat.]

I can relate to this VGE. i use to play Initial D so much in the arcades. Still like to play it when I could. 8^) Anthony..

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

An all time classic franchise for sure

[@srvuk]

Agree about the mode making this look so much more realistic. The night lights (and snow) really do add affect. If each car does have different mechanics then that would really add to the value of long term play. Most definitely one of the more appealing. With racing games being featured heavily (keep 'em coming), I feel that there is scope for evaluation of the best controllers to use to play racing games, including steering wheels.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

More racing games are always coming :)

[@Robert-G]

this looks great. will be interesting to see whether it’ll run on pregnant arnie. I loved playing GT1 against friends a millennium ago. This seems to play very different but gives the same fun vibes. I played too much newtonian 6dof space pew pew in the last years, so my analogue pocket and channels like this have been great finding fun games, that are vastly different than anything new. :-)

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Haha they just talked NAOMI and not NAOMI 2 so highly doubtful

[@TheHardcoreGamer1]

I've been playing this one for a couple of months now. The fourth map is where it really got tough😭.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It def ramps up the difficulty hard

[@HunterTinsley]

Never saw this one in an arcade. My arcade had Wagan Midnight instead. However, I played a TON of street stage on PSP. It's a great port, IMO. I think you're spot on at 3:30. I never got sick of street stage even when I lost because it was so satisfying to play, and I knew where I made the mistakes.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Wangan is another classic franchise for sure

[@METR0lD]

One of these times you're going to put that NAOMI board inside the Dreamcast and it's actually going to work. Mark my words!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Lol nothing works in the last week. So many repairs

[@chriswy697]

Love the channel, love your videos, but I'm most impressed that you can play a driving game in the first person view haha

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Haha only way to play Initial D IMO

[@jiijijjijiijiij]

It's worth getting used to, because once you are then you can usually drive with a lot more precision. First person tells you exactly where the car is trying to go at all times, so you can make small corrections a lot easier than in a chase view that has the car constantly pointing in different directions during a turn. It makes the biggest difference during long sweeping turns.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes it’s much easier to track your front end in a drift

[@Oribaa90]

It is a whole different experience. I love to see the car I am playing with but whenever I need more precision I turn on the first person view

[@gsggshhhh455]

So agree when you said graphics didnt need to get better than this, this game looks amazing

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

NAOMI holds up really well visually still

[@Imgema]

@@VideoGameEsoterica That's Naomi 2 though, it's plenty more powerful than the original Naomi.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s all just NAOMI 2 me

[@rosstee]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Me 2

[@chryoko]

What is amazing is that those roads look very identical to those i was driving in the Hakone area, Kanagawa prefecture not far from Yokohama and Nissan Atsugi NTC R&D center.... back then i was using my company Subaru Impreza Bi-Turbo in Japan with no GPS 😁

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Hope you drifted some corners!

[@hipsterelephant2660]

I still have my License card for this one in my Wallet from 17 or so years ago.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Please give that to a cop next time you get pulled over 🤣

[@hipsterelephant2660]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Will do! Haha

[@AfterBurnerTeirusu]

I'd love to own a cab of this one.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Me too. Me toooo

[@GuntanksInSpace]

This particular version of Initial D Arcade Stage, I kinda spent the most time on, and it was the last of its kind as V4 onward felt quite different compared to the first 3 it looked and felt like. An aside, but v2 was also quite popular in our arcades, but races devolved into Integra Type-R mirrors because in that revision, that car was mad busted and got rightfully nerfed in v3 lol

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The one nice thing is they are good in their own ways

[@NerdENerd]

Ray tracing most definitely did exist back then, it just wasn't available for real time applications like games. It took hours per frame to render. I used to play with a program called POV-Ray and I would leave my machine on all weekend to render 25 frame animations in 320X200 resolution.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Well yes it was around. Just not in gaming

[@simon41978]

I wanted an Initial D game for Dreamcast so much. It's humorous with the raging and those two girls out on the pull. It would have been one of the most popular games on the system, I think. The PS3 game got middling reviews (Famitsu gave it 27/40) though I loved it. Rider Of The Sky! And, that was the end of home ports.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s funny that’s the console it skipped considering Sega makes them

[@miltonbates6425]

This looks like tonnes of fun. Is there a good Naomi 2 emulator out there? I know this series was ported to PS2 and PS3 in Japan.. gonna have to check them out.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Flycast or Demul

[@hexagonsun33]

there are a couple of barcades in dallas/north texas that have this in operation. it's a really fun game, but i wished it emulated better with wheel support.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Nice they still have them in the barcades at least

[@gravious]

i love the look of this :) the valley sections of nfs: carbon? were a nod to this series i believe, and that was a-ok :D

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Need for Speed was always a fun time too

[@Gorilla_Jones]

It kind of reminds me of High Velocity on Saturn.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Totally the same genre

[@Isaac-ry3ks]

It's a shame that Sega only gave us initial d 1-4 in the States but they are still damn good versions.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It just must not have done well enough here sadly

[@Isaac-ry3ks]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Yeah but at least my arcade close to me has it so I can play on real hardware. I have so many cards made LOL

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

@Isaac-ry3ks the card saving is a def fun feature

[@Nashxyzz]

Initial d home versions which started before the manga with the first released on gameboy jp called initial d gaiden which reminds me of games like F1 race on gameboy, initial d another stage on gba jp was more a turn based rpg game for a racing system, initial d perfect shift online was on 3ds, intial d on ps1 jp which was more of first stage, initial D special stage is an extended version of 2nd stage on ps2 jp, initial D street stage on psp jp is 3rd stage without snow courses and a card system mechanic for upgrading cars, and inital D extreme stage was a port of 4th stage on ps3 unless you got the jp version with online vs and could donwload the car pack which upgrade it to 5th stage, The more realistic drift system was put into in 4th stage arcade and was revamped / improved in later arcade versions.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s wild how long Initial D has been around as a video game franchise

[@costum04studio84]

many IDAS players are mostly fond of to the IDAS5 because it's overhaul the physics significantly like adding a tire and brake wear, while for me personally I'd really like the Restructured story mode in IDAS6 and 7 which properly integrated the player to the flow to the story to becoming the Legend of The Street, IDAS8 in the other hand is got restructured again acting the player as somekind trainee by following somekind of curriculum that mostly objectives taken from 'Special Stage' (PS2) story mode like Guntape Deathmatch, don't spilled out the cup of water, use the Gutter and BlindAttack

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The good thing is there really isn’t a BAD Initial D game

[@costum04studio84]

@@VideoGameEsoterica oh actually there is, "Mountain Veangence" 👀🤣

[@costum04studio84]

from my experiences I can say golden age for Initial D games are from IDAS5 to 8, PS2,PSP, and PS3 are good enough port of the Arcade to play, yet it's kinda insane that IDAS and WMMT series are still on going and the most popular Arcade Racer in many Arcade placeses especially in Asia and mainly japan which also they've still held Competitive events like Esports for both series, so yea we can say 'SEGA vs Namco of arcade racers' are still going through these day, but sometimes they does crossing over each others with some characters and cars appearing in their each game

[@Imgema]

Pretty sure this game runs at 60fps but this video makes it look much lower, 30-ish. Does it run smoother without the video recording?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Sure you watched it in 60 on YT? It’s native frame rate recording

[@Imgema]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Yeah. And the frame rate on the video looks around 30fps with uneven frame times. I can watch other 60fps videos just fine. Maybe it's an option in Flycast (if you are using that) i remember there was one that could make the frame rate jitter like this even when the video output was reporting 60fps. Something about threading IIRC.

[@wiibur]

Do the headlights go blocky because of inaccurate emulation?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I’d have to look

[@thiagocancian2336]

I imagine you're playing this on actual hardware on a consolized NAOMI 2, right? For how much do you think that hardware goes for nowadays with the NetDIMM and etc upgrades? Cheers. :))

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Nope emulation :) I do use it sometime on the channel. Bout $800 I’d say

[@GamerGee]

I hate that they didn’t release more intial ds in the us.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Me too. Must just not be the user base

[@GamerGee]

@@VideoGameEsoterica it’s weird because the few arcades that imported it people played them heavy. But because the game is so localized to Japan it’s hard for those who don’t know the show or Japanese to play it. Kinda like that one game they have that’s the Grand touring racer game

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Could be a licensing thing too

[@GamerGee]

@@VideoGameEsoterica I dunno. They released us ports before I think. But remember. This is sega. They never know what games people want. LOL

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

@GamerGee haha Sega does it’s best to make us happy and unhappy all at once

[@PopeTheRevXXVIII]

The Arcade games are so much better than the Home ports. Something always felt off about the PS2,PS3 and PSP games I play Zero in Teknoparrot

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The arcade versions def are better than the ports

[@dorfus]

If you truly loved Initial D, we wouldn't have arguments about Japanese cars vs German cars.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

French cars only

[@dorfus]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Renault? More like Reneeauuuugh

[@Ragesauce]

FIRST!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

In the race or in the comments haha

[@Kage5868]

i dont get this initial d series , i feel like its trying to hard to be liked. it's like shenmue of racing games right?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Kinda hard to make a comparison there

[@METALFACEDOOMXXXX]

You can't drive buddy

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I think I did fine