Side by Side (franchise)

Side by Side (サイド・バイ・サイド) is the franchise for a popular 1990s touge racing game series whose name changed to Battle Gear (バトル・ギア) in the 2000s. It was developed by Taito and was first released on arcade cabinets before being ported on the PlayStation home consoles. Battle Gear 2 is known as Tokyo Road Race in Europe. Taito released The Fast and the Furious arcade game in 2006 which is based on the popular movie of the same name known as Wild Speed in Japan and whose subject is import tuned cars.

Side by Side series
Side by Side episodes allow the player to select import sports cars from a Japanese maker either, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, later Mitsubishi and Subaru were available as well, and race downhill in Japanese mountain passes known as touge.

Battle Gear series
The Battle Gear evolution allows online play in both arcade and home versions and add a tuning feature for the cars. Battle Gear 4 saw the adding of European and American makers for the first time, Renault, Peugeot, Citröen, Mini, Volkswagen and Ford.

Tokyo Road Race
The home version for Battle Gear 2 was licensed by Midas Interactive and released as a budget game named Tokyo Road Race and released by various distributors in PAL territories, hence the different packages in Europe and Oceania. Online play mode was deactivited in the Tokyo Road Race version and the game was not distributed in the American market.

Series Timeline
[1996] [1997] [1999] [2000] [2001] [2002] [2003] [2005] [2006]
 * 🇯🇵 08: Side by Side (Taito JC System Type-C)
 * 🇯🇵 06: Side by Side 2 Evoluzione (Taito JC System Type-C)
 * 🇯🇵 12: Side by Side Special (PlayStation)
 * 🇯🇵 06: Battle Gear (Taito Type-Zero)
 * 🇯🇵 11: Side by Side Special 2000 (PlayStation) - bargain re-edition
 * 🇯🇵 07: Battle Gear 2 (Taito Type-Zero)
 * 🇯🇵 03: Battle Gear 2 (PlayStation 2)
 * 🇯🇵 11: Battle Gear 3 (Namco System 246)
 * 11: Tokyo Road Race (PlayStation 2) - offline only
 * 🇯🇵 12: Battle Gear 3 (PlayStation 2)
 * 🇯🇵 12: Battle Gear 3 Limited Edition (PlayStation 2) - deluxe edition with goodies
 * 🇯🇵 12: Battle Gear 3 Tuned (Namco System 246)
 * 🇯🇵 07: Battle Gear 4 (Taito Type X+)
 * 🇯🇵 11: Battle Gear 4 Tuned (Taito Type X+)