Densha de Go! forum reopens….
Before I knew about A-Train I discovered another, pretty unique, Japanese train-themed game called Densha de Go!
The community for DDG was friendly and more established than it seems to be for our beloved A-Train (perhaps due, in part, to the pick-up-and-play-ability of the game – quite literally you can get the hang of it in minutes).
So I got hold of a copy, really, really enjoyed it, and lurked around the Densha de Go! forum occasionally. Then (I think this is what happened) some chancer bought the domain name that Butch had been using and made his own – completely crap – DDG site. Butch was rather irritated by this and disappeared in a cloud of red mist. The forum slowly died.
Fastforward two years and it’s back again. There’s some tale involving lost cookies, passwords and a backlog of user accounts, but whatever the reasons were it’s great to see the old place alive again. It might not see the kind of activity it once did, but a few of the die-hard gamers are still there and as an English-language source of information for DDG it’s the first place you should visit. I was relatively impressed by the size of DDG’s fanbase considering that it is, after all, an obscure foreign transport game. More impressive still when compared to the far smaller numbers of interested gamers who visited my own A-Train forum. Perhaps A-Train will always be too niche for most tastes….
Like I said, DDG can be compulsive: Rather than laying track and organising schedules you actually operate the train from inside the cab. At the station your vehicle needs to be on time (as you’d expect for a Japanese train) and brought gently to a stop to within inches of a set marker – as is the case for the real J-Train drivers. Along the way you accumulate a points chain that is broken if you screw up by speeding, sounding the horn too much and so on.
There’s a Japanese site for the latest version (on NDS) HERE. I’ve got the Nintendo DS version and so far i’d say it was inferior to the PSP incarnation in terms of control and graphics – so if you have the choice go for PSP. THIS is the DDG FINAL! game page with a video of in-game footage.
You might also want to view this game footage from a recent version which includes the Shinkansen.
In Japan you can play DDG in the game centers….
…not only that but there’s a game over there inwhich you get to operate a bus – come to think of it there’s a few PC versions of this type of game, too. If I’m not mistaken they used to talk about them on the DDG forum. Brilliant.
Tags: densha de go, game, japan rail, shinkansen, youtube
29/07/2010 01:21 
Subscribe
