Pre-E3 06: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

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PS2: The hit movie series finally comes to consoles in this slide-heavy adaptation

Are you turned on by neon at high speeds? Does the idea of buying a $3,000 car and then spending $50,000 to modify it make your spine tingle? Then you might want to give The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift a look when it hits stores next month. Based more or less on the third Fast and the Furious movie, it'll give you free rein to mod the hell out of over 100 real-life cars and race them at high speeds through Tokyo's streets and freeways.

There are more than 300 modification options available in Tokyo Drift, from bumpers and “drift charm” trinkets to things like body-widening kits, and all of it is licensed for the game by real manufacturers. What's more, you can customize it to the point of putting different-sized wheels on each axle. Just be aware that everything you do will affect your car's performance, as Tokyo Drift actually takes things like tire compounds and street surface into account when deciding whether you stay on course or go careening into a wall.

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But while Tokyo Drift's deep modding system and attention to detail seem to be aimed squarely at gearheads, you won't need to know a Pioneer AVG-VDP-1 navigation system from a Work Emotion XD9 wheel to play. The game is based on a series of blockbusters, after all, and it delivers an awesome sensation of speed, with lots of blurring and shaky camera work. And even at high velocity, the cars look great - for the PS2, anyway.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.