Art director Gerardo Sprigg was working at Acclaim's struggling coin-op division on Magic: The Gathering: Armageddon, and before the studio closed, Sega employees paid a visit looking to buy arcade projects or people to recruit.

Several months passed, when Sprigg received an email from Makoto Uchida, who had a small Japanese development team that were living in the US and working at Sega of America.

Sprigg and Uchida met, where it was decided that the old Acclaim art team would reunite and join Wow Entertainment in the US to work on a new project that would appeal to American audiences.

Uchida was a big fan of Tokyo Wars which was popular in arcades, and wanted to create a vehicle game as he noticed that people enjoyed cabinets with steering wheels and pedals.

[13] Rob Smolka of Next Generation said that the game was "not terribly original, but the basics are solid enough to make it fun, especially when you can taunt your foes and coordinate your attack with teammates online".