Bandai Namco opened a new webpage to mark the 20th anniversary of Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune. The company will gradually add congratulatory messages from both staff members and players of the arcade game series. The page is only available in Japanese as of its initial reveal, but the company is also planning to add English and Chinese versions in the near future.
This anniversary specifically pertains to the Maximum Tune series of arcade racing games. Namco released the first-ever Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune entry in July 2004. It modeled the arcade game after Michiharu Kusunoki’s manga series that launched in 1990.
Bandai Namco gradually updated the arcade games with new iterations that also added new cars to the roster. The more recent entries have been noted for featuring not only Japanese cars but also those from international brands, such as Audi, Lamborghini, Dodge, and Chevrolet.
The company had also launched Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune 6RR Plus in Japan in April 2024 to mark the series’ 20th anniversary. The home country usually enjoys the latest iteration exclusively for a period of time before Bandai Namco brings it to other regions.
For instance, the original Midnight Tune 6 appeared in Asia Pacific in July 2019, which was roughly a year after it came out first in Japan in July 2018. The release gap for 6RR was reduced to just a month when it came out in Japan in November 2021 and Asia Pacific in December 2021, although it ended up completely skipping the 6R version that appeared in Japan in 2020. Bandai Namco has still yet to announce 6RR Plus‘ launch window outside Japan as of July 2024.
Wangan Midnight has also been often compared with Initial D. Both car street racing manga series have been featured in crossover content updates, although the Maximum Tune games have still yet to directly feature Initial D characters like what Sega did in Initial D The Arcade.
The only direct collaboration event between Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune and Initial D arcade games to date happened in 2015, and it only rewarded seasonal interface decorations without any actual character content. Bandai Namco instead featured the character crossovers in its mobile game Drift Spirits.
The Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune arcade racing games are readily available in arcade centers worldwide. The series’ latest iterations as of July 2024 are 6RR Plus in Japan, 6RR in Asia Pacific, and 5DX Plus in North America—which launched in January 2022.
