Mount Akina SUCKS; Here's Why...

Mount akina is the most well known touge in existence. Popularised by the street racing manga initial d, this touge is adored by racers of all types. In real life, arcades, and simulators – mount akina is synonymous with Japanese street racing. If you’ve ever tried touge racing,there’s a decent chance your first experience took place on this infamous stretch of road. But, Mount Akina is swear words im not allowed to put in the description

Whenever we drive fast on a road, we intuitively treat it as a racetrack. From finding the racing line,the apexes of each corner, locations for potential overtakes and of course all of the frigging pot holes . Therefore, for us to understand why mount akina is a terrible touge, we need to look at it like it is a racetrack – and discuss what makes a racetrack great, or in this case, not so great.
Race Track Design Rule #1 – Technical difficulty. When designing a race track, the most crucial design element is it’s difficulty. This can be a fine balancing act between making a bland track, or one that is simply too difficult.
Mount akina isn’t particularly difficult, in fact, id go so far as to say it’s boring – no matter how loud you blast eurobeat. In essence, it’s just a bunch of long, bland straights connected via hairpins. Sure, there are a few off kilter corners that can be challenging the first few times you attack them, but, that’s as far as it goes. No, literally, that is as far as the roads of akina go. There’s nothing else to it. As a driver, your biggest challenge with akina is the ability to get a good launch from hairpins. You will gain the most time on straights, as we found out in my racing lines video.
For me personally, Akina simply isn’t stimulating enough to even keep me interested enough to finish the run. I often find myself becoming bored about halfway down, incidentally when Im driving on one of those massive long straights. The worst part is that this is actually true. In my opinion, it doesn’t offer enough of a challenge to be secured as a great touge. There are way more engaging touges, which offer more smiles per hour than akina.
If you want a touge that is properly technically difficult, I can wholly recommend Nagao & Usui. Usui is easily in my top 3 touges, purely because it flows so well. Usui feels like it was purpose built as a road to race on. You can pretty much drive the entire thing on instinct. Not only does it have flow, but it has a huge variety of corners too. From right angles, to double apexes and even some acute hairpins. Just look at those little fellas.
Nagao is cut from the same cloth, but in my opinion, it’s just that little bit more exciting. This is due to the cambered or banked corners. They make Nagao a pleasure to drive on, as the car settles into these corners and allows you to really push it to the limit without worrying too much about losing the rear end. It almost feels like a rollercoaster, with each corner cradling you through. It feels incredible in the least weird way possible.

Race Track Design Rule #2 – Low margin for error. Needless to say, the most exhilerating races and battles occur when drivers are pushed to their limit and are punished when mistakes are made. No, not with speeding tickets – by crashing, or at the very least spinning out.
Seperating drivers at a high level is tough, and turning up the head by allowing a low margin for error is important.
Again, mount akina falls short here. Akina is a relatively wide road. It only really tightens up on the slow corners, which is almsot the exact opposite of what you want if you’re looking for a really engaging touge. The road doesn’t tighten and constrict like many great do, in fact, it only gets wider.
While some may enjoy this – and it may be better for bigger, more chad cars, ultimately it does make things feel again, quite bland. If you lose grip on akina

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[hopstr]

You understand why takumi didn't like driving when the story started, he had to drive this road for 5 years straight.

[estimateddeatharrival]

I swear to god I will never forget trying to drift on akina with some friends and the moment we get super close some dude with a grip car knocks us off the mountain and keeps going

[juliemittel]

i think one of my friends who plays both AC and various F1 games put it beautifully into words: "mt. akina is comparable to shanghai international, meh to drive on, but excellent for racing. you'll find practice or qualifying boring, but in a race, with an equally skilled opponent? then, the track comes alive."

[RustyRussell_YT]

I love Tsuchisaka, its flow doesn't break the tempo till the very end, especially the old version with start near the tunnel, makes you you wanna keep going for hours!

[slnt]

Tsubaki is probably my favorite touge. I don't think it's the best for overtakes, but it's really satisfying to get right. Especially the first section where if you get it perfectly you don't even need to use the brakes.

[SaijoRhen]

"Beginners can drive fast on a straight line, that's cake. Intermediate drivers start to work a little better by mastering the corners, but the truly advanced drivers find their own course."
- Ryosuke Takahashi.
Put bluntly, if you find the track boring you just aren't going fast enough, push the knife's edge my man.

[izzyusagi]

As other good touges I'd also add Happogahara and Shomaru.

[SHIZURAKU]

I don't even have favorite Touge I guess.. but I like to think that Nagao is like my home course cuz it's the first Touge map I ever played at when I first started.. I learned all the basics there, made few friends there and had a ton of fun and races with random players.

[KatarinaWasTaken]

pretty funny that in initial D they talk about akina perfectly matching the 86 and how keisuke could hardly use his 350 horsepower but after the second hairpin you're pretty much flat out 80% of the course

[SteremyJeele]

This video underpins exactly why I still prefer 2017 Akina to the newer ek_Akina. The margin for error is too large on the newer track, and the wide sweeping banked roadway hand-holds most of the lower power cars through each corner. I still find the narrower roadways of 2017 Akina to be plenty engaging, especially when battling.

[munmunyee]

To me, Akina is the Dust 2 of the togue world. It's a classic. The 4 sections are like 4 movements of a concerto, each with a different tempo/approach (at least in TA)
It's kind of like Suzuka, in that regard.

Iroha, then, would be like Laguna Seca.

Tsubaki Line is kind of like the Nordschleife. Plenty of flow, but also extremely technically demanding as well as being demanding on consistency, not to mention countless blind corners that can only be mastered through repetitious experimentation.

My personal favorite though (though Akina comes close due to some stupid sentimental attatchment I have), is gonna have to be Happo - it's the most intense rally course on asphalt.

[Katari-san]

I had a talk with the creator of the early version of Akina, and he did tell me the map wasn't exactly on scale with the real life version. After looking it up on google maps, I had to agree with him. I'm still waiting for a version that will stand up to the real thing.

[Kyuschi]

4:43 never did i think i would be excited to hear the words "realistic wet leaf physics"

[moisesezequielgutierrez]

Akina looks like one of the road course for newbies to me.
Irohazaka, Happogahara, and Akagi are my favorites so far.

[ivansidorov]

Usui's rythm is amazing. It feels like a never ending weight-transfer dance.
One of the few tracks where you don't have to memorize every turn, but adjust to the frequency and swim along it, because it doesn't give you a break. Simply hypnotizing.

[bsn]

The road through Zion canyon in Utah would be awesome. I doubt it's in any game, but having driven it at night when there's not anyone else out there, it's an awesome drive. The road widens and tightens at different points, even on the steep section at the bottom with lots of big hairpins (that would be a lot of fun to drift) there's some chicane-like twists that make for interesting corner entrances and exits. Toward the top of the run, a lot of meandering twists and turns cambered to help you around. In the middle is a long, very tight tunnel with several turns ranging from a fast kink to some surprisingly sharp but still sweeping corners. I wouldn't want to push it in real life with my own car but if, between the close rock and tunnel walls and cliff edges, pushing it and getting it right on a video game (or even a car I didn't need to use daily) would feel amazing.

Also, besides seeing a couple of these videos recently, I know almost nothing about touge. I just love driving a fun road

[konohamaru]

guys please remember. its public road. not closed racetrack. the city designer not view it from racer viewpoint

[ksweew]

for me there is no bad tracks in touge as long as you can physically drive it to the end ofc. Because unlike race tracks they were not meant for this and this means you have to addapt to the track you'r on and have to abuse it's mechanics, it's all about learning what is the track about. That's why i like touge, it's more of your relationship with the track rather than learning patterns you can apply to almost every track ...

[mrreal]

I guess I might be the only person who finds Akina to be the hardest touge out of all others. For me my reality is completely the opposite touges that you said was more technical I feel are simple and easy to drive but going fast or me trying my best to be fast on Akina is a real challenge just 1 run on Akina drains me. For me its like the Nurburgring of touges.

[michakasprzak]

TSRB: "Akina is wide, too easy and boring"
Me (who's just started) trying to get a proper racing line or drift through the hairping and ending up in the guardrail: Excuse me?