Vehicles that are featured in the game are mostly Japanese cars, such as the Nissan Skyline GT-R, Mazda RX-7, Subaru Impreza, Honda Civic, as well as the Toyota AE86.
And additional rivals such as Kenji, 2 Guys from Tokyo, Kenta Nakamura, Kyoko Iwase, Nobuhiko Akiyama and Sakamoto.
Japanese version: 27 January 2004, English version: 2004 The Lan Evo Team's home course is one of the new courses such as Akina Snow (only night), Shomaru, which was initially an exclusive for Special Stage and Tsuchisaka, Also, new opponents in the game are Tohru Suetsugu, Atsuro Kawai, Miki, and the Tsucisaka Lan Evo team.
The game features original Eurobeat songs from artists including Matt Land, Powerful T., Ace Warrior, and Marco Polo.
Competitors from previous games such as Miki, the Tsucisaka Lan Evo team, Sakamoto, Nobuhiko Akiyama, and Tohru Suetsugu have been removed.
Some cars featured in previous games such as the Lancer Evolution VII and Toyota Celica have been removed.
Although the tire and brake wear are not displayed anywhere in the game, experienced players can notice the difference in the change in physics as they progress in races.
New characters that appeared for the first time in the game are Kobayakawa, Satoshi Omiya, Imposter Project D, Kai Kogashiwa (R.T. Katagiri S.V.
Online network was extended to support regions in which earlier versions of the game was known to be popular in, finally achieving both nationwide and international matches.
New courses such as Momiji Line, for the first time in Special Stage, appeared with new layout and Hakone, the place for a battle between Ryosuke's F.C.
The character designs are taken from New Initial D the Movie with entirely new BGMs that are rock songs from the films such as Backdraft Smiths, Clutcho, The Hug Me, The Valves, and Gekkou Green.
As like Stage 4 (which arcade system board has changed too), a number of vehicles and tracks are unavailable upon launch, but later added back through free updates later in the year.
The Version 2 update was released on 18 April 2019, and featured Shun Aiba and NISMO GT-R's 2017 Model, which appeared in MFGHOST Released on the Sega ALLS MX2.1 arcade system and as upgrade kits for Initial D Arcade Stage Zero and Sega World Driver Championship on 25 February 2021, and later 29 July 2021 outside of Japan as an export version.
Certain character models like the ones used in the Theory of streets, associated with the cars and used on the game's season splash screen are reused from previous arcade stage titles.
In 2023, Sega worked along with Wahlap to bring Initial D The Arcade to mainland China with full localisation.
Players who had a save file from Initial D Arcade Stage Zero or Sega World Driver Championship on their Aime card were given continued play benefits rewards which included avatar items from those games, avatar and dress-up tokens, full tune tickets depending on the number of full tuned cars the player had owned in Arcade Stage Zero or driver level in Sega World Driver Championship, and titles based on the player level in Arcade Stage Zero.
[3] New collaboration events have occurred with Wangan Midnight, Lifeguard, Sega's Hatsune Miku's Project Diva,[4] Chunithm New,[5] Pop Team Epic,[6] and Quintessential Quintuplets.
And play stamp cards distributed included keychains, start screen background, and tachometers that reminiscent the previous Arcade Stage titles, under neon, avatar pieces and background musics two of which were made by Dave Rodgers and one from Sega that debuted from Arcade Stage 6 AA.
This version contains a story mode that allows the player to reenact racing scenes from the Initial D manga series (up to Vol.
Additional features, including replays for saved time-attack records and Iketani's car introduction.
Sega also balanced all the cars in-game due to the overpowering Integra DC2 from Initial D Arcade Stage Ver.2.
[citation needed] In 2014, Patrick Michael, Sega Amusements' head of local R&D, explained Initial D's lack of popularity in Europe: "Games like Initial D, which is a fantastic driving game but it's a one-on-one race where you're either in first place or last place.
In Japan it's very popular, but in Europe no-one wants to be in last place, really - you want a much more open road, more AI cars and more of a feeling of achievement.