Initial D: Mountain Vengeance

How to Play

FGearshifter commented:

An action racer with a comic style. Interesting.

1. Unzip the pack of Initial D: Mountain Vengeance (IDMV) to a folder where you store game images.
2. Mount the .BIN File with Virtual Clone Drive (VCD).
3. Navigate to the mounted image and run the Setup.exe
4. Install the game to a game folder. Ignore the message which states that you had 0 MB of RAM or something like that.
5. Decline the installation of Adobe Acrobat Reader.
6. Decline the installation of Direct-X 8.1
7. Decline a system restart. Choose Will restart later, then click on Finish.
8. To play the game with DGVoodoo2, copy the four DLLs from the MS/x86 folder of DGVoodoo2 to the game folder, where the InitialD.exe is.
9. There is a mini-manual (pdf) included in the installation. You can find it in the game folder.
10. If the game doesn't run at once, open the task manager, close the process of the InitialD.exe but don't close the process of the Rundll32.exe (you can read about the Rundll32.exe on tech sites), then start the game again. After playing, close the process of the Rundll32.exe
11. If you turn off the music in the game options, it might be that sound is turned off as well. But it is turned on again if you change the volume. So if this occurs regularly, just turn down the volume by one before closing the game and turn it up again by one after restarting the game.
12. After trying in vain to configure the analogue sticks of my gamepad in the game options, I chose to use the keyboard which is fitting for the action-oriented steering of this game.
13. The single player mode is a series of races against different opponents. After a win you get rewarded with some skill points that you can use to upgrade acceleration, handling and such. All racers have their own car. You begin with one racer, and by winning races you can unlock other rathers, thereby unlocking other cars as well. Simple but motivating.
14. In the race options I've chosen automatic drifting and manual shifting. You can accelerate fast with the automatic, but you'll have more control with the manual shifting.
15. To return to the main menu, choose next race first, then exit to the main menu.
16. In general, you go into the game with NEXT and you go out of the game with BACK. This applies to saving and loading too. After choosing a new game, you create a new player profile which is then saved into one of the available slots. There is an autosave, I guess it's done after you have won a race and placed your newly earned skill points.

IDMV is such a game that you can play and have fun with for half an hour a day, and it's simplicity is just suited for that. Also, it's a game of the type: I don't know why but it's good somehow. Can't explain why but it's just so.