Racing Lagoon

Craaaazzzy, Racing Lagoon's quote

Racing Lagoon is a night racing game mixed with RPG elements ("High Speed Driving RPG") created by Squaresoft in 1999. It's an underrated game in Japan that never got an international release, and it's one of many awesome games Squaresoft created, with a rather dark story, interesting characters, an exciting racing system and fully-customizable cars. The game uses a drifting technique as the main cornering technique, and the player has to master drifting to beat the game.

The game fictionally takes place in the year 1999 in Yokohama, 10 years after the event called "Fastest Legend". One night, Team Bay Lagoon Racing (BLR), led by The Ace, Ikki Fujisawa holds a team battle with Night Racers Honmuku (NR). One of BLR's newly joined members, Sho Akasaki, begins his story of his racing career. Akasaki is determined to find out about the mystery of the legend 10 years ago, as well as his forgotten past.

The BLR team has five members:

• The Hero: Sho Akasaki
• The Lancer: Ikki Fujisawa
• The Big Guy: Kyoji Nanba (He's not really big. He's just respected by other people.)
• Butt Monkey: Yamada Kenzo
• The Chick: Yuka Suzuki

Example

• Artifact of Doom: Diablo-Tune itself isn't evil, but it's very overpowered and very dangerous to use.
• Awesome but Impractical: Some engines has very high speed output, but they have no part socket at all and can't be leveled up.
• Big Bad: Wontec Corp.
• Big Damn Heroes: The final chapter has the protagonist locked up in the Bay Lagoon Tower that's going to explode. Tsujimoto and Yuuka come to save the day.
• Bland-Name Product: To some extent. All the cars are renamed to prevent licensing costs, such as:
  • Sprinter Trueno = 86-Thunder
  • Corolla Levin = 86-Lev
  • Celica = Celine
• Bonus Boss: Try using Diabio Zeta's engines and equipments against final bosses.
• Car Fu: Bumping into opponents makes you bounce off them, likewise when someone hits you from behind. Getting in front of someone and shoving them back is a good tactic.
• Cool Car: You can access to more than 40 bodies of the obviously licenced cars, modify their body with different body modifier parts, and the car's look also changes when you put a body into different drivetrain chassises.
  • You can even get truck and bus bodies and mod them, but they're so HUGE and obscuring you almost have to switch to first person view to use them.
  • Ikki Fujisawa's DR30 Skyline falls under this. The body kit mirrors that of the Skyline that competed in Super GT in Japan, and it makes it look pretty badass.
• Disc One Nuke: Putting a lot of turbos with a Lo comp makes your car go insanely fast even during the middle part of the story. Backyard SP's chassis also makes starting a lot faster even though it has a low level cap. Although in the end where everything's insanely fast, it's driving skill that determines the outcome of the races.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The final race with Ikki, as the game keep telling you that, happens to have his girlfriend as the rival driver. Fujisawa just sits beside her because he can't drive.
• Despair Event Horizon: Kyoji Nanaba. And it's your fault. You have to beat him to become a candidate of the Yokohama GP to advance the story, ruining his dream and ambition in the process.
• Distressed Damsel: Yuka in the first chapter.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Kyoji Nanaba, who just dies, and it's you who have to know it.
• Friendly Local Chinatown
• It Got Worse
• Kick the Dog: Poor Yamada gets the serious treatment. It's quite unsure he's dead or not by the end.
• Last-Name Basis: Everyone is called by their last names except Yuka. Fujisawa does call you by first name. But while everybody calls Yuka by first name, you'd prefer to call her "Suzuki."
• Mind Screw: A lot after 5th night.
• Nightmare Fuel: The "Nightmare" music is completely made to creep you out, complete with creepy laughs, and it's played in almost every events during the later halves of the game.
• No Export for You: Rumor has it the game was planned to have a US release (It's listed under "rumor mill" in Digital Press's online rarity guide) but it never happened. No translation patch exists either, but the game is relatively playable without much Japanese knowledge (you won't understand much of the story though)
• People Jars: D-Sleep system, which is used on YOU
• Plotline Death: Kyoji dies during the Yokohama GP because he crashed his RX 7, which he Diablo tuned.
  • Sawaki crashes into a corner during Chapter 2's TAIMAN and dies.
• Single-Minded Twins: The Ishikawa brothers start, but subvert this later on.
• The Ace: Team leaders are this. Fujisawa is noteable as he is your team's leader.
• The Stoic: Tsujimoto is called this, even though Akasaki is more of a stoic himself.
• Tournament Arc: Yokohama GP
• Those Two Guys: Akira Tsujimoto and Makoto Sawaki
• Women Drivers: Subverted with Motomochi's girl only team, but straight with Yuka.