JDM: Japanese Drift Master Lets Players Live Out Their Initial D Fantasies
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JDM: Japanese Drift Master is a charming game that does some really interesting things within a genre that has a tendency to look very much the same between series. It released on PC and Xbox in 2025 before releasing on PS5 earlier this month.
The story plays out like a mashup between The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift and Initial D. You play as Tomasz “Touma” Stanowski, a young Polish enthusiast who moves to Japan in search of a new start. You quickly make some like-minded friends who introduce you to the local scene and help you get a job delivering sushi. Your first car is even a rusty Levin coupe. The story is told not through cutscenes, but black-and-white manga panels. Thankfully they’ve included an option which numbers the frames in order for those of us who aren’t used to reading right-to-left.
Completed missions advance the story and earn you money and experience. Nothing new there. JDM does, however, incorporate some under-explored mechanics into those missions. It’s a cop-out in other games to rely on beating a set score in drift modes rather than putting you on track alongside AI drivers, but this game does both. From trains of cars on touge passes to one-on-one tandem battles on tracks, many missions pit you against other cars in both grip and drift races. It’s an ambitious mechanic for a relatively small studio, and admittedly the AI performance is less than spectacular at the moment. In the first touge battle I drove, for example, the AI driver I was battling went into the guardrail on all three of the first hairpins.
That example is sort of emblematic of the current state of the game as a whole. It’s trying to do a lot of different things with varying levels of success. At its core, it’s a fun, open-world racing game in a beautiful setting with a compelling-enough story. Where it falls a little flat at times is when it comes to applying all of its ambition to the wide variety of races it lets you take part in.
In terms of car selection and customization, it’s a solid enough start. The game features actual licensed models from Mazda, Nissan, Honda and Subaru, as well as legally distinct Toyota lookalikes. A DLC adds several American muscle cars in the form of a few Dodge and Ford analogues. The upgrade and tuning system works well enough, though it’s fairly basic compared to some other recent games. There’s no option for engine swaps or anything too radical. The exterior customization is a little bit better than the tuning, but comes up a little short when it comes to color and livery options. A simple, clean look with good fitment is very achievable, though.
One common complaint among Xbox users is that the game doesn’t have wheel support, though that is apparently being developed. The controller settings are rather limited as-is, with only three presets to choose from, all of which feel slightly less than intuitive. Still, once you get used to it, the handling model is pretty fun. At the very start of the game you’re given an option between an “arcade” and a “simcade” assists setup, with the “simcade” option doing enough to present a little bit of a challenge without being overly punishing. When you get the controls down it can be pretty satisfying.
True multiplayer modes are notably absent from the otherwise fairly feature-rich game, with the only way to match up against other real players coming from leaderboards in the game’s challenge mode. You can set scores in drift, grip and drag races with your own builds or with preset cars and then see how you stack up with people from around the world, but it doesn’t quite compare to getting to shred the beautiful mountain passes the game has to offer with a few friends. JDM’s website mentions that a splitscreen mode may be coming soon, but says that it’s “too soon to discuss the next stages of a multiplayer mode.”
The fictional Guntama Prefecture in which the game is set is a really nice place to rip around in an iconic JDM ride, and the developers haven’t fallen into the trap of making every road wide as hell to accommodate hypercars. There are wide highways for top speed builds, but the majority of the roads are tight, winding mountain passes and realistic-feeling streets within small towns. The map isn’t huge, but with about 10 hours into the game I feel like there’s still a decent amount to explore. They’ve also incorporated several iconic Japanese tracks, including Ebisu (called Ebigo in-game) as locations that you can fast-travel to. Some missions take place on those courses, while plenty of others go down on the streets.
For around $30, JDM: Japanese Drift Master is a solid option for anyone looking for an open-world racing game with a focus on drifting and a little more in the way of an interesting story arc than some of its competitors. While it’s rough around the edges, I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve put into it, and I can definitely see myself returning to it the next time I’ve got an itch to live out my Initial D fantasies. The developers seem to be hard at work updating the game and implementing new features, cars and bug fixes, so I can only imagine that those rough edges will be smoothed out with time.
Our Rating: 7/10
