Thanks to its Japanese setting, Forza Horizon 6 is denser with Easter eggs and references to pop culture and car culture than any previous game in the series. Perhaps the simplest and most resonant of the lot comes in a surprising form: a cup of water.
Initial D looms pretty large over Forza Horizon 6. The manga, anime, and game series has shaped so much of our understanding of Japanese street racing, drifting, and tuner culture — especially of Touge racing on hairpin-riddled mountain roads. It also connects directly to real locations in Japan with real racing scenes, like Mount Haruna (Mount Akina in Initial D, home of protagonist Takumi Fujiwara and the Akina Speed Stars). There’s no way Playground Games could not represent it in the game.
So, yes, as eagle-eyed fans spotted when the original map was revealed, Mount Haruna is in there, as are other drifting hotspots represented in Initial D like the Hakone Nanamagari route. The food delivery story missions in Tokyo City include one where you have to drift your vehicle while delivering tofu — a tip of the hat to Takumi’s day job delivering tofu for his father in the mountains, which he would use to perfect his driving skills.
And, of course, Forza Horizon 6 would naturally include the real-world cars featured prominently in Initial D, including Takuma Fujiwara’s 1983 Toyota Sprinter Trueno. The Sprinter Trueno is the most famous variant of Toyota’s AE86 series, a legendary car in Japanese drifting culture. This cheap, unassuming car boasted a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout and near-perfect 50/50 weight distribution between the front and the rear, making it ideal for grassroots motorsport and for modifying for the nascent sport of drifting. For Initial D‘s purposes, it was credible both as the Fujiwaras’ humble workhorse and as Takumi’s drift battle steed.
