The official...and I mean **O*F*F*I*C*I*A*L*** WMMT appreciation thread!!!

[isamu]

Y'know, when people often asks other people who the biggest Ridge Racer fan in the world is, they say without a doubt it's Isamu. Yes, I am the biggest Ridge Racer fan in the entire galaxy, and quite possibly....POSSIBLY the universe!


However, there is another arcade racing franchise that starting to question whether Ridge Racer can maintain the throne of racing greatness. And that racer is...Wangan Midnight, or more recently, the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune series...or WMMT for short. WMMNT is a series that takes place on the freeways of Japan. There are a wide variety of real life highways in different  areas of Japan you can race on, such as the infamous C1 Loop on the Shutoko Expressway, Osaka with its beautiful scenic buildings, Hiroshima, which has some of the most fun elevation changes and corners, Fukuoka, with its fast flowing sweeping turns, or Hakone, which is the games only Touge track, taking place in the gorgeous mountains of Japan(think Initial D).


The cars are all real vehicles! You can enjoy driving everything from the Toyota AE86 to a Lamborghini Countach, there's an insane amount of cars to choose from, all with their own subtle differences in handling and acceleration.


The WMMT series has been going for many years now, but sadly does not get the attention it deserves. I suspect the main reason for this, is because the last few games have not gotten a console release and in fact if I'm not mistaken, Namco has only offcially ported TWO(maybe three?) games in the Wangan series to consoles to date! While Ridge Racer has gotten something like a dozen games brought to home consoles, Namco, for whatever oddball reason, seemingly refuses to give the WMMT series the love it deserves by bringing home a port of the recent arcade games.


This is very unfortunate, because the series....especially the last two games in particular....WMMT5DX+ and WMMT6 are incredibly fun games to play!


The game has a long Story Mode with up to 100 chapters and is a blast to play through. But....***BUT*** multiplayer is where the *REAL* fun begins!!! The Maximum Tune games' multiplayer allows you to race against three other players for a 4-Battle all out war on the freeways of Japan! The racing is fast, frantic and very VERY competitive! You can be leading the pack but one mistake and the other guys will catch you in a heartbeat!







But check this out....there's another mode called Online Ghost Battle mode, where you can select from a series of ghost cars from other players, and race against them. But here's the twist....the ghost cars you race against are *SOLID* cars! They're not tranparent like in Gran Tursimo or other games! That means you can race like you're actually battling against them in a real online race! Want to nudge them into the wall? Go right ahead! Want to block them so they don't gain the upper hand? Be my guest!! The ghost mode is exteremly fun because you don't have to worry about disconnections or lag but still experience the race as if it's a real multiplayer race. Way cool! Here's CURRU battling my ghost(I was under the moniker Takum):



Now here's the good news.....Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5DX+ and WMMT 6 are fully emulated and can be played at home on PC(even on a ---smurfy--- slow PC)!!


BUT....that's not all!!!! As of a few months ago, the brilliant minds within the WMMT community have created their own mp server and have figured out how to allow players to play WMMT5DX+ and WMMT6 *ONLINE*!!!!!! That's right. Both WMMT5DX+ and WMMT6 can now be played online by connecting to two servers...PANG and Project Asakura respectfully. Now for the sake of avoiding any confusion, I will assume most people will want to play WMMT6 since it's the latest in the series and I suggest you do, as the Project Asakura server is the one that's the most popular.


I'm obviously not going to get into how to obtain the game or anything like that, but what I WILL do, is invite you to our community discord for Project Asakura. This discord will get you going and will help you on your journey to getting WMMT6 setup and connected to the PA server.


https://discord.gg/m5mdMY5uAu


I will end with this....as a super duper *DUPER* die-hard Ridge Racer fan, I'm absolutely over the moon with the WMMT series. It is what Ridge Racer probably could have evolved into had it kept going. The driving is quite similar Ridge Racer V, but the drifting in Wangan has more depth and the cars have more weight.


Right now I am incredibly hooked on both WMMT5DX+'s and WMMT6's online ghost battle mode. I won't even get into the other stuff I haven't mentioned yet like the ability to dress up your car with all kinds of cosmetic parts, liveries, stickers, colors, etc. It's absolutely WILD!


If you're into Ridge Racer even a LITTLE bit, or have any sort of affinity for arcade racers, I STRONGLY encourage you to get into the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune games, and join us over at Project Asakura for some great online arcade racing! There are people playing WMMT6 online every day. Not a lot mind you, but if we can get the discord community to grow we'll have dozens of players to race against in no time! I'm on a crusade to encourage people to join us and hopefully you guys can spread the word about how great WMMT6 online is. Trust me it's an absolute blast!!!!!


Anyway here's the discord link again.


https://discord.gg/m5mdMY5uAu


Please join us and say hello. We highly welcome new people as long as you're friendly and not an ---uvula---. Lots of friendly folks over there that will be more than willing to answer any and all questions you may have If you guys do join the discord, and want to reach out to me my discord name is Isamu.


Hope to see you guys there!

[MrThunderwing]

I've played a little bit of these games in Teknoparrot but not much though. The little I played though seemed pretty excellent, I much preferred the gameplay here than something like the InitialD games. I had no idea you could play as a Lamborghini Countach in them though (my favourite supercar evaaaar!). How do you access it?

Namco are pretty f'n strict about use of the game for gameplay videos of it though. I used a little bit of footage of one of the WMMT games, right at the end of a video tutorial I made on how to get Boomslang's FFB plugin working. the video featured lots of video of other games before it and was more about MAME than TP. The WMMT footage in question was 2 minutes of externally recorded footage (so you could see my steering wheel), that I was talking over and had replaced the soundtrack to. There was no mention of the game in the video title or the description and yet somehow, someone from Namco saw it and thought this was grounds for a full on video takedown and I got issued with a copyright strike (after it'd been uploaded for about a year and a half and had amassed over 10,000 views). Absolute bollocks.

[isamu]

I've played a little bit of these games in Teknoparrot but not much though. The little I played though seemed pretty excellent, I much preferred the gameplay here than something like the InitialD games. I had no idea you could play as a Lamborghini Countach in them though (my favourite supercar evaaaar!). How do you access it?

Namco are pretty f'n strict about use of the game for gameplay videos of it though. I used a little bit of footage of one of the WMMT games, right at the end of a video tutorial I made on how to get Boomslang's FFB plugin working. the video featured lots of video of other games before it and was more about MAME than TP. The WMMT footage in question was 2 minutes of externally recorded footage (so you could see my steering wheel), that I was talking over and had replaced the soundtrack to. There was no mention of the game in the video title or the description and yet somehow, someone from Namco saw it and thought this was grounds for a full on video takedown and I got issued with a copyright strike (after it'd been uploaded for about a year and a half and had amassed over 10,000 views). Absolute bollocks.

Excellent post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah the Countach is available from the get go and it's a beast of a car. But yeah if you get some time hop on in the discord bro. I'm telling you even if you don't play online, the online ghost battle mode is amazingly fun!  I'm so addicted writing the original post irritated me because I wanted to hurry back and play the game lmao!

[buttersoft]

The Countach was available right away in 5DX+ but not in the initial release of 5.

I dunno, i prefer ID myself at first glance, but I'll admit i need to give WMT a longer run

[MrThunderwing]

Ahhhh, I think I've got 5 not the 5DX version. Is it available in 6 from the get go as well?

Edited: NVM, checked it out myself when I got home from work. Welp, how's about that then, my favourite ever car, playable and sat right under my nose this whole time. Time to go pretend I'm Sideswipe from the Transformers.

[isamu]

OH MY STARS AND GARTERS we just had an **AWESOME** 4-player online session in WMMT6 on the PA server!!! Shout out to [MYS] XUAN, [PHL] Adxm, and [MYS] shoyo for the great races.




That was a lot of fun! I'm telling you guys, this game is the BOMB!!!