Part of Denshattack’s impressive appeal isn’t just in its breakneck speed or tight controls; it’s also in the game’s ability to deliver finely-tailored, bombastic setpieces. Driving through a stage really fast is fun, but driving through a stage with a collapsing building, giant fish, or cursed spirits? That’s not just fun, that’s entertainment, son. That’s something you can put on a billboard and show off to the folks.

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Some of Denshattack’s stages are a little more grounded than others, relatively speaking, sticking mostly to just dilapidated tracks and/or architecture, natural, overgrown areas, or futuristic cities. Within that framework, though, you’ll find more than a few standout stages that really beat you over the head with just how wild they can get, and I mean that in an endearing way. Hey, we’re playing a game about driving a train in a very irresponsible manner faster than Sonic. It’d be disappointing if the stages weren’t also ridiculously high-octane.

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4-1-3 The Tower of Endurance

A Better Use of a Data Center

In Chapter 4, after recruiting Shin and Fumihiko, Emi and company return to Dead Ball’s territory to take another swing at Madoka, only to find the rank and file engaged in some majorly over-the-top training. The cornerstone of this training is the so-called Tower of Endurance, a test track built out of a towering Miraido data center.

The Tower of Endurance is a three-phase track, with three different objectives meant to cull the weakest members of Dead Ball. The first phase has you build up trick combos to see the Yaoyorozudo, the second phase has you ducking and weaving between server racks and knocking competitors off the rails, and the final phase is a no-holds-barred race against whoever’s still left standing. The tower has a labyrinthine layout, looking the most like a place trains shouldn’t be racing. Which… I guess it technically is, come to think of it, but better Denshattacking than running Miraido’s dumb servers.

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3-1-1 Light, Fire, Destruction!

Ride the Lightning

At the start of Chapter 3, in search of a mechanic to get Emi’s train in proper order, the team needs to cross over to Shikoku via an old series of bridges. However, there’s a storm brewing, and the thing about derelict metal architecture is that it tends to be a magnet for lightning strikes. Literally.

Light, Fire, Destruction starts out as a fairly simple straight-shot track, albeit one under constant, heavy rainfall. However, things quickly take a turn when the rusty railings begin to crackle with electricity, drawing lightning strikes down from on high. Even Emi’s train, which runs on magnetism and fighting spirit or something, can’t handle a direct lightning strike, forcing you to hop between rails to avoid the strikes and their rippling aftershocks. At one point, a powerful strike completely cuts a bridge in half, forcing you to dive down and grind across the half-sunken remains of tanker ships in the bay.

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8-3-2 Protection Run

Literal Loan Sharks

In an effort to get in good with the local yakuza family in Chapter 8, Emi is tasked by two of its enforcers, the Hamamoto Twins, to collect protection money from the people of Sendai, directing her to stop at all the collection boxes around the city. Emi considers the ramifications of this for all of four seconds before deciding to just smash the boxes instead, which the twins naturally take umbrage with.

Protection Run has you cruising the streets, forests, and waterways of Sendai, smashing up the yakuza collection boxes as you go. It doesn’t take long for the twins to get wise to you, and they start tailing you through the track in their personal shark-like trains. Those trains don’t just look like sharks, though, they’re capable of launching off the track and taking massive bites out of the path ahead, whether it’s in a halfpipe or on a riding wall. Not only do you need to weave through the multiple terrain types, you gotta do it while enormous shark trains try to take a bite out of you, which I don’t think is a sentence I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing out before.

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5-1-2 Into Tarantula Territory

Hope No One Was Using that Building

In Chapter 5, the gang passes through the Kansai region, the home turf of the Tarantula gang. Out of all the Denshattack gangs, the Tarantulas despise Miraido the most, which means both the region at large and even its domed city aren’t in the best shape. All the crumbling infrastructure makes Denshattacking even more hectic than usual, and that’s without even actively antagonizing the Tarantulas themselves.

Into Tarantula Territory sees you cruising through the roughed-up streets of Hyogo prefecture, covered in collapsed buildings and rubble. You make greater use of the monorail lines in this stage, as most of the tracks are busted, even buzzing over a sporting stadium in the middle of a game at one point. The highlight is when you’re riding over a bridge and its segments start collapsing, and assuming you hop onto the Yaoyorozudo, that’s followed by an entire derelict building nearly falling on top of you. I hope no one else was planning on riding this line today.

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4-1-1 Splash Wave

Surfin’ Nippon

On their way back to Dead Ball’s territory at the start of Chapter 4, Emi and her newly-recruited mechanics need to cut through the Kagawa prefecture to get back to Chugoku. The fast way through is the old Seto Naikai bridge, but even compared to other ruined bridges they’d encountered by then, this place is in a right state, with half of them completely underwater. Luckily, Fumihiko had the forethought to fit Emi’s train with an underwater module, so it’s time to take a dip.

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Almost immediately after starting Splash Wave, your train takes a flying leap off a bridge and into the drink, with massive fish swimming by and seaweed sprouting in bulk. Luckily, there are still rails to ride, so you can keep on cruising like normal. You pop in and out of the water at several points, looping around a lighthouse and scaring seagulls in the process, as well as bouncing on the tops of giant jellyfish, dodging bites from moray eels, and grinding along the noses of gargantuan marlins. Before you can reach the goal, you get snatched by a shark and carried through an underwater trench, then swallowed by a blue whale and popped out of its blowhole.

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5-5-1 The Phantom Wind Pilgrimage

Don’t Think, Feel

In navigating the Tarantulas’ territory in Chapter 5, Emi learns of a special kind of wind current that trains can ride known as the Yukaze, the “Phantom Wind.” She manages to see a few of the currents in her initial outing, but Tarantula lieutenant Ryusaku offers her a better way to train her senses: riding the lines of Mie prefecture completely blind. You want to talk about riding trains irresponsibly, it doesn’t get much more irresponsible than this.

In The Phantom Wind Pilgrimage, most of the stage is completely blacked out, with only your train’s immediate surroundings rendered in blurry, indistinct shapes. In this state, you need to be more aware than usual of incoming drift signals and terrain changes, as you won’t see them until they’re right in front of you. This is also the stage where you really learn how to master the Yukaze in earnest, with multiple wind currents appearing consecutively, and occasionally on different lines, forcing you to quickly flip between orientations in order to keep bouncing through the air.

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1-3-1 Seaside Showdown

Ferris Wheels and Volcanoes

While Emi is first getting into Denshattack in Chapter 1, she and Fernando cruise into the Dashing Queens’ territory in Kagoshima, particularly one of their lieutenants, Rikka. Rikka challenges Emi to her first official Denshattack duel, and the two take off across the sun-soaked tracks. It’s perfect for an action-packed summer.

Despite being a very early-game track, Seaside Showdown is an excellent tastemaker for the rest of the game. It starts simply enough on tracks along the beaches of Kagoshima, but quickly goes off the rails (literally) when Emi hops the tracks and lands on a ferris wheel, spinning it off its supports and rolling it through the bay. After that, both she and Rikka take a dive into an active volcano, curving around igneous rocks and lava before the volcano starts erupting, launching fireballs as Emi flies out the top backed by a glorious magma eruption. It’s a good thing it’s already a post-apocalyptic world, or that eruption might’ve hurt someone.

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6-6-1 The Fuji Escape

Up the Lava, Down the Ice

Speaking of active volcanoes, while the gang tries to escape from the Miraido Task Force in Chapter 6, Fumihiko makes a gutsy suggestion: shaking them off in the forested mountains of Yamanashi prefecture. In other words, taking a trip to everyone’s favorite skyline attraction, Mt. Fuji. Or, in this case, taking a trip into Mt. Fuji, as well as down Mt. Fuji.

The Fuji Escape starts with some MTF attacks along the residential rails of Yamanashi before you escape into a cliffside mining cave filled with enormous crystalline protrusions. After sliding through a few of those, you emerge into the molten depths of Mt. Fuji itself, where enormous waves of magma constantly pass over the tracks and force you to jump them. After successfully escaping the innards of the mountain, you emerge onto its frosted surface, sliding down a massive stretch of completely iced-over terrain and snow-choked city. There are barely even any tracks during this back half, but as Shin points out, Emi’s well past the point of even needing tracks to ride on anymore, with the ice and Yukaze currents doing plenty to get them down the mountain.

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3-3-1 Cursed Track

Meet Your Yokai Neighbors

After meeting and impressing Shin in Chapter 3, he makes a request of Emi: help him bring his brother Fumihiko down from the mountain. She’s down for it, but in order to reach Fumihiko’s perch, they’ll need to run through a cursed track haunted by the restless spirits of those who died in a fateful Denshattack duel. Yeah, ghosts are a known thing in this setting. What, are you surprised?

Cursed Track is one of my favorite stages in the game, partially because I’m a huge weeb and I love yokai as a concept. The stage seems normal at first, but as you enter a dark tunnel, massive snapping-mouthed spirits appear in the sky and a dreary track is lit up by will-o-wisps. Within this tunnel is an entire cursed ocean, within which gigantic humanoid spirits with gaping, sharp-toothed mouths emerge, slamming their hands down on derelict ships. Not only that, but there’s an enormous tunnel filled with wanyudo, flaming wheel yokai, that you have to circle around to keep from getting burned. After all that, though, you just pop out the other end of the track no worse for wear, presumably with a silent agreement to never speak of any of that ever again.

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7-5-1 Kaiju Attack!

Exactly What it Sounds Like

In order to impress Sei in Chapter 7, Emi challenges Tokyo’s infamous Yamanote Line, destroying a whole bunch of Miraido infrastructure in the process. Unfortunately, it seems she made a little too much of a racket, because the titanic kaiju Morzilla rises from the nearby seas in an exceptionally bad mood and begins attacking the city with her atomic breath. Time to make tracks before we get stepped on.

Kaiju Attack is pretty much the natural conclusion of any game that’s constantly raising its stakes of spectacle: a full-scale giant monster attack. Morzilla begins ravaging the city right away, blasting away segments of the rail with her atomic breath and stomping right through your path, forcing you to jump over her feet and tail, as well as avoid her direct attacks when she leans in. Not only that, but her fellow kaiju Panzeta joins in to chase you through a canal, firing atomic blasts right at you as you roll away on an enormous sphere.

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