Tokyo Nights: The Shutoko Revival Project

 It feels like a large part of the racing game community are obsessed with recreating The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift. Every game has to have a Supra or a Skyline with massive amounts of customisation, winding mountain roads and long stretches of expressway, and any game that doesn't have all of these things isn't worth bothering with. OK, I may be exaggerating... just a bit... If you happen to be one of those "Supra, or we riot" people, then today's blog post is about an Assetto Corsa mod that could be one of the greatest things ever (according to JDM fanboys).

The Shutoko Revival Project is a group of mod-makers that have recreated the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo. If you've played the Tokyo Xtreme Racer games, read the Wangan Midnight manga and/or are familiar with the legend of the Mid Night Club (the Japanese street racer crew, not the Rockstar game series), then you'll know that the expressway network is one of the ultimate havens for street racing, and the chance to experience these roads (about two hundred miles of driveable road) without traffic, in any direction and at any speed you wish is not one to be missed.

The Shuto Expressway can be divided into a few areas, as seen on the map above. The first area I'll talk about is the C1, the Inner Circular Route. This route is like an extended racing circuit; about nine miles long and with a mixture of high-speed sections, tight curves and a few tunnels. It really feels like it would make the ultimate street circuit. Trying to achieve the fastest time around this section of the expressway is surely one of the ultimate tests of man and machine. Keep an eye out for Tokyo Tower near the southern end of the loop.

Branching off from the C1 loop is the Shibuya route, an elevated part of the expressway that offers a decent chance to take your car towards its top speed, before peeling off the expressway towards the city streets, making a wide 180 through a junction and heading back onto the expressway. Admittedly, there's not much to this section of road, but it makes a nice addition to the existing road network.

Heading east away from the C1, you'll find yourself on the Belt-Loop. This loop incorporates part of the Bayshore route, Route 9 (which connects the Bayshore Route to the C1) and Route 11 (which runs across the Rainbow Bridge towards the Haneda route). This particular loop is much faster than the C1, with high-powered, stable cars doing well here. At night, the Rainbow Bridge is lit up with colour, and blasting across it at more than 140 miles per hour is a unique experience.

Get on the Belt-Loop and keep heading westbound, and you'll find yourself on the Bayshore route. The Wangan (as the Bayshore Route is called in Japan) is surely one of the most infamous stretches of road in all of Japan; long straights and high speed curves that are all about pushing your car to the absolute limit. By the time you get through those curves (and past the tollbooth), you'll likely be pushing at least 180 miles per hour, and the long straight that follows will have you keeping your foot nailed firmly to the floor as you blast across the Tokyo bay. Seriously, that straight is more than six miles long. No wonder the Mid Night Club chose this area as the location of their speed runs. You can just imagine a Bugatti Chiron exceeding 250 miles per hour across the bridge, and thanks to this mod, you can do just that.

All good things must come to an end, and at the end of the Bayshore Route is the junction for the Daikoku Parking Area. You can keep going into the Mirai section in Yokohama, or turn off and head towards the Yokohane. In contrast to the wide Bayshore Route, this stretch of road is much tighter. It's two lanes wide and with a number of curves that restrict your average speed. Racing here is sure to be a challenge, even with no traffic to inhibit your progress. This section also includes the Haneda Route, linking the eastern section of the Yokohane and the southern-most part of the C1.

So now I've gone over the different areas of the Shuto Expressway (and remember, each road can be driven in either direction), now it's time for me to actually review this map. If I could sum it up in one word, it's this: Epic. Every time you drive on the map, whether you're just cruising or going for a full-speed time attack, it's awe-inspiring. The massive area means that there's always somewhere else to go if you find a section boring, and each area has its own challenges. The visuals are also great, with road signs accurately replicated and the buildings and landmarks getting lit up as the sun goes down and night looms. Starting a drive in the late afternoon and driving along into the night, the atmosphere changes, and you start to feel the spirit of those street racers come to life.

If I had to pick a drawback, it's that this map is rather resource intensive. This is a very large map, with a much larger area than the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and Assetto Corsa wasn't really designed with such large areas in mind. You will find the car quivering, particularly as you get away from the centre of the map. You'll also need a decent-spec computer to be able to run it. Finally, as this is a free-roam map, you won't be able to drive on it with AI, at least not at first. You can find AI lines on RaceDepartment, though the one I tried has a couple of areas where the AI won't go, and it also takes ten minutes to load the map with the AI line.

So, would I recommend the Shutoko Revival Project? Absolutely, yes. Fans of street racing, Japanese cars, or just speed in general will find much to like about this map. Increasing traffic and police enforcement has largely put a stop to street racing on the Tokyo expressway network, but this mod allows speed freaks to experience the Shuto Expressway with no limits. One upside to racing game players' JDM obsession is the large number of tuned Japanese car mods, and this map is the perfect environment to push your NSX/RX-7/GT-R to the limit. If you are looking for a modern-day Tokyo Xtreme Racer game, Wangan Midnight simulator or just an interesting free-roam map, then I'd say this is one of the must-have mods for Assetto Corsa.

If you can't wait to hit the highways for yourself, then you can download the map from the Shutoko Revival Project Discord. You will need a Discord account to sign up, though you can also get technical support, chat with like-minded individuals and even organise meet-ups and races on the SRP free-roam server.

To complete the street-racer atmosphere (and join the official SRP servers), you'll need some tuned cars. You can find the official SRP car pack on their official Discord server, containing a mix of modified cars with varying levels of tuning.

If you're looking to expand your car collection beyond the SRP pack, then Assettoland has a large number of tuned cars (including some that used to be in earlier editions of the SRP pack). Just keep in mind that the quality of cars on Assettoland can vary, and that a large number of the modified cars are tuned for drifting. You can find some good cars there; just be prepared to sort the wheat from the chaff.

To round out the car collection, I would like to recommend SutaTheRunner's cars. He's made a Ferrari Testarossa and a Porsche 911 Turbo, both of them modified and fitting in perfectly with the Wangan Midnight theme. If you want a European exotic that's right at home on the expressway, they are worth checking out.