Author: DanPeriod

Played some more this past weekend, some additional notes for new ID7 players.

Tag Battles

• The fastest way to earn points for upgrading your cars, Tag Battle earns 900 for a win and 300 for a loss.
• There are eight checkpoints throughout the race, each one has a silver and a gold gate. The silver gate earns +1 point for your team while the gold gate is +2 points.
• If both teammates hit the same color gate on the corresponding checkpoint, that team earns an additional +2 points.
• Higher team score at the end of the race wins, the last checkpoint however is worth extra points (and +12 for one team if both players finish first with gold.)
• VS the CPU, staying just in front of the other car, and taking their gates first is often a great strategy for denying points to the other team.
  
  Car Customizing / Garage
  
• The second option on the main menu takes you to the garage, here you can see all of the cars currently attached to your card. You can also choose to add a new car, the price of which varies based on the arcade.
• Selecting a car you already own takes you to customization, which appear to be only cosmetic upgrades(?) in exchange for large amounts of points. You can preview the different parts before deciding on any purchases.
• It’s recommended by most that you spend your points on full-tuning your car first, before purchasing any of these items.

With a few of my local arcades getting Initial D 7, I felt that it might be useful to make up a quick guide for new players that may just be getting into Ver 7 (or returning players from the Ver 3 era.)

This info is only based on me playing a few dozen games & searching the internet, but I will try my best to be accurate and to the point. Hopefully it will be useful to some!

Getting Started / Card Creation

• After inserting enough coins to start a game, the card insertion screen appears. Press Start to skip, the select the LEFT option (purchase card.) A number will appear in the center, that is how many additional coins you insert to purchase your card.
• When entering your name, select the bottom green character to change the text entry to English letters. I also recommend using the d-pad for all menu navigation, as the wheel can lead to selection mistakes.
• You can get a general idea of which cars are strongest/weakest by looking over the Overall Car Rankings page. Also note that you can now have multiple cars stored on one card.

Menu Navigation

• Some helpful translated menu screens, courtesy of Initial D World.
• To accept VS challenges from other players, make sure to select In-Store Battle on the right side of the main menu, before playing Story or Time Attack.

Driving / Gameplay

• Just as in Version 3, keeping your car’s RPM high is important for maintaining good acceleration. This is especially true for cars that have yet to receive many upgrades, which are prone to losing a lot of speed when turning.
• Downshifting and gas-off are both effective ways to slide around turns. Each car behaves differently however, so techniques and results may vary.
• Tapping the brake just before or during a turn will induce your car to drift (as indicated by the Drift light near the tachometer.) This leads to an advanced technique known as Brake Cancel, which is usually done by using your left foot to quick tap the brake pedal.
• Many people point out that a car’s overall handling dramatically changes after completing SPEC 4 and SPEC 5 tunings. This is also where Brake Cancel becomes important, as you lose less speed when cornering at higher SPEC.

That’s all for now! Next week I will explain the basics of Tag Battle and Car Customization.