Nintendo lanzará su primer Free-To-Play en Japón

Free-to-Play games are everywhere you look lately, and sometimes they’re awesome, sometimes they’re terrible, and sometimes they’re just weird.

Now, the Nintendo 3DS is getting its first free-to-play game, and it definitely tends toward the latter category at first glance. Initial D: Perfect Shift Online, set for a Japan-only winter release, is a racing game. Except, you don’t steer the car, you just shift and use cards with different skills.

The game is based on the Initial D anime and manga, which was at the forefront of the drift racing craze in the early 2000s. It’s hard to tell whether the game will be any fun, but it does a good job capturing the look and Eurobeat-infused sound of the show.

Will Initial D: Perfect Shift Online be the only free-to-play game to hit the Nintendo 3DS, or does it signal a wave of games? Maybe Candy Crush Saga will follow to make sure no one is safe from its wrath.