Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune Ignition Detailed

It has been a long wait for Maximum Tune fans to see the next iteration of their favorite racing game hit the scene, but we’re in the home stretch as Bandai Namco has released a number of new details for the seventh title in the series, Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune Ignition (now retitled from just Speed Ignition). Let’s take a look at the latest for what is to come.

Maximum Tune Ignition – The Press Conference

First off, Bandai Namco held a press conference & livestream in Japan that explained these details, however, it was all in Japanese. It also spends the first 30 minutes or so focusing on Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6RR+, which is only available in Japan (and will likely remain that way, given this new version is much bigger and worth skipping over it for), so that’s less relevant for most of our readers.

Thanks to YouTube’s own forced AI translation filter, the video has some rather odd “auto-dubbing” into English going on. It can fortunately be turned off if you prefer, although the translation does eke some meaning out; it’s just that the voices mix a lot and sometimes repeat information, as well as other odd things throughout (lot’s of “YES, YES, DONE, YES” statements). Any real Japanese/English speaker will have to let us know how accurate this is. Skip to 29 minutes in if you are just concerned with Maximum Tune Ignition.

Maximum Tune Ignition – The Details

There are a number of announcements that have been made between the video above and the new website that they launched to detail & promote the game. For those unaware, it is normal for Japanese companies to create entire websites that are dedicated to a single game.

First off, this had previously been titled Wangan Midnight Speed Ignition, whereas now it has been renamed to adopt the full WMMT brand, making it Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune Ignition. That is for the Japanese/Asia version and is not confirmed for additional territories, though I’d imagine it will be simply Maximum Tune Ignition over here.

There are 48 cars that they have mentioned, but if the translation is correct, there will be more than that available. This is from the website; from what I’ve been told, the licensing cost alone on some of these brands is not a small amount:

Here are some of the vehicles that they are showing, although again, there is much more to be unveiled. Also note that they are not resetting the speedometers, so you won’t lose your KM progress. However, that is for 6RR+ players, we don’t know if that will apply to 5DX+ in the event that the company does officially release this overseas. If it does though, they spend some time discussing how important it is to carry things over given how much time people have put into the game, so I think there is a good chance that they will maintain the 5DX+ data:

At 40:52 in the video, there is some brief direct capture play, with them saying how the game has improved from the initial location test. It sounds like the handling has improved and several other “major changes” have been made to how it feels, based upon extensive feedback from the players.

There is a completely new cabinet that the game uses, which you can see here. I’ve used my phone to translate the notes, which also reveals in the small text (which I didn’t translate here) that the brake pedal has feedback too. Perhaps that’s been done before, but not that I’m aware of; it’s to make it feel and react like a real brake pedal. That should be interesting to see in how it works with drifting. This also uses a bigger screen than previous WMMT installments, which combined with the updated graphics makes for a more immersive cabinet and experience.

Along those lines, Kazuhiro Maeda (the game’s producer) stated that there has been a lot of work put into the sound design of the game. On top of the surround sound system, it may be that they’ve added in more subtle audio that will make you feel like you’re actually inside that car.

While a release date has not been decided yet, Maeda says at one point that “we are thinking of releasing it during Golden Week”, which is a set of four holidays which all happen within seven days in Japan that tends to see large numbers of people leaving Tokyo and going out to particular destinations. That is at the end of April, beginning of May, so even if the game doesn’t launch right then, it should be pretty close.

Unfortunately, there was no announcement about a Western overseas release. Giving that an emphasis in case anyone is fast scrolling through. It has been confirmed as coming to China, but we will have to wait and see where else they will decide to release it. Given that it wasn’t at Amusement Expo either, we can only guess if it will come to IAAPA 2026 or not. That would make for quite a show on Bandai Namco’s booth, given that Resident Evil 2: Arcade is most likely to appear then.

That all said, it is launching this year, so even if it sticks to Asia, WMMT fans have something to be excited about. What do you think about Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune Ignition?

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