Denshattack! Review: Tracks Can't Hold This Wild Ride

1 week ago 11

Published Jul 15, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT

Daniel Trock is a Contributor at DualShockers specializing in PC games, lists, and reviews. He has been writing professionally since 2018 and covering games since 2020, with previous work spanning guides, news, lists, and reviews across multiple publications.

Before joining DualShockers, Daniel contributed guides to GamerJournalist and lists to TheGamer. He currently covers tech topics for SlashGear and BGR. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Marist College and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University.

I like trains. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly; something about a nice train just gets me really excited. Their strength, their speed, the sounds they make, it’s all great. However, I have a very particular fondness for seeing trains fly. Not like in a horrific derailment accident, but literally flying through the sky in a way that a train would obviously never be able to do in reality. Any time I see a train fly, usually in an anime, it puts a big ol’ smile on my face, and that probably explains why I was excited about Denshattack! from the moment I saw its first trailer.

Not only does Denshattack! have that same all-around love for trains in its proverbial heart, it also shares that same affinity for seeing trains do things that they absolutely shouldn’t be able to do, from high-flying stunts to skateboard-like flip tricks. It’s like every ridiculous stunt you’ve ever pulled with a toy train, filtered through the lens of classic Shōnen anime tropes, with the frenetic, high-speed energy of Dreamcast-era games like Sonic Adventure 2, Crazy Taxi, and Jet Set Radio. It’s like my wildest childhood dreams have come to life in the most wondrous way, and I adore it.

When Life Gives You Rails, Ride ‘Em

Denshattack! is set in a post-apocalyptic depiction of Japan where an unspecific climate-based cataclysm has utterly decimated the country at large. The wealthy and privileged live in massive domed cities managed by the mysterious Miraido Corporation, while everyone else does their best on the outside.

Our hero, Emi, runs a ramen shop in a small corner of Japan’s Oita prefecture, but since most of the roads were destroyed in the cataclysm, she does deliveries in the next best way: by riding along what’s left of the national railways in her personal train car. After a chance encounter with railway enthusiast Fernando, Emi is drawn into the world of high-flying, high-tech train stunts and racing, a scene collectively known as “Denshattack,” and sets off on a cross-country journey to become the best there ever was.

The story is, in a word, ridiculous, and I like it like that. The whole thing is very Shōnen Jump-coded, with Emi exhibiting an upbeat exuberance for Denshattack not unlike Dragon Ball’s Goku does for fighting. Rather fittingly, this depiction of Japan runs almost exclusively around trains and railways, with every region having its own dominant Denshattack gang, and the Miraido Corporation using its high-speed underground VACTRAIN to cement its dominance.

Naturally, this provides a perfect excuse for Emi to travel around, challenging people to Denshattack battles. It’s not a deep story, but it is a lot of fun to be along for the ride, especially as you meet all the different gangs and their uniquely eccentric leaders.

Additionally, what really cements the setting’s Shōnen-ness is the fact it actually has an entire power system revolving around piloting trains in increasingly bizarre ways. There’s a throughline of logic to it all, mostly revolving around ambient magnetic fields, which is stupid in a vacuum, but the best Shōnen power systems are all wonderfully stupid in their own ways.

Keep Your Hands Inside the Car at All Times

Denshattack, both the game and the in-universe culture, mostly revolves around high-speed, high-flying train operation. In most of the game’s levels, the basic goal is just to get from Point A to Point B. Of course, since the rails are all busted up, you can’t just take a casual ride. You need to switch tracks to avoid hazards, flip through the air to avoid dead ends, and generally hurl and drop yourself thousands of feet up and down through the air, all while moving as fast as possible to cross the finish line in the shortest amount of time.

Since you’re almost always following a track (or some similar manner of straight line), you don’t need to worry about steering, but you do need to lean into curved tracks so you don’t derail, choose lines at intersections, and generally be ready to make snap movements. It’s extremely fast-paced and quite exciting in a manner reminiscent of the Sonic Adventure games.

At the beginning of the game, Emi’s train can’t do much besides switch tracks, jump, and do aerial flip tricks, but as the story goes on, and you meet more accomplished Denshattackers, your repertoire of skills and abilities only gets bigger and wilder. When there are no rails available, you can grind along thin bars, ride sideways along walls, loop around through circular tunnels, and even latch onto monorail lines and swing yourself around.

It’s extremely fast-paced and quite exciting in a manner reminiscent of the Sonic Adventure games.

And before you ask, yes, you can do multi-track drifting as well. Because you learn so many abilities, some of the later levels can get a bit overwhelming, and I accidentally fat-fingered my controls on more than one occasion. Thankfully, the game has very generous checkpointing, so even if you crash, you're never sent back far, and you can keep trying as many times as you want.

Technically, you don’t need to do any tricks in the majority of levels, but if you do build up some big combos, as well as pull off manuals on landing to chain them, not only do you build up a big score, but Emi will eventually get into the zone. When your energy’s full, a mystical rainbow railway, the Yaoyorozudo, appears in the sky, allowing you to take completely different routes from the main one.

Like Playing on the Best Hot Wheels Playsets

In addition to the basic A-to-B levels, the game occasionally mixes it up with different mission types. Sometimes, you’ll be placed in a larger map with a rail system running in a circle, having you pursue a handful of different objectives by switching lines and following different intersections. Other times, you’ll be placed in a skatepark level, where you need to perform as many high-scoring tricks and combos as you can before time runs out, Tony Hawk-style. Naturally, there are straight-up races as well, where you’ll need to race large swaths of rival train cars along a railway circuit and either place first or just knock all of them off of the rails.

Just about every level has some kind of wacky setpiece to get you hyped up, whether it’s riding a ferris wheel across a stretch of ocean, zooming through a haunted forest, or grinding along the noses of giant swordfish in the ocean.

Naturally, though, the game’s biggest setpieces are its boss battles, where rival gang leaders battle you either in their own trains or some manner of gigantic, vaguely train-adjacent monstrosity like a transforming mecha or an enormous Hot Wheels-esque baseball pitching machine. These are always an absolute hoot to play through, both for the fun factor of dodging their attacks while still building up your score and the sheer spectacle of it all.

You only need to finish a level to progress the story, but there are also several categories of medals to earn in each one. You get medals for high scores, fast completion times, completing a series of dares like performing specific stunts or tricks or finishing without crashing, and collecting all the hidden items and collectibles along the track. Admittedly, some of the gold medal thresholds on these seemed a bit high, so the majority of my level completions were just bronze, but I was having too much fun just playing it to care.

The World of Extreme Rail-Riding and the Weirdos Who Live In It

By tracking down those aforementioned collectibles, like gears and spray cans, you can visit the various shops along the path to unlock new train cars with different abilities and customizable decals, respectively. The train cars, in particular, let you tweak your experience a bit, adding both positives like increased scores for certain kinds of tricks and drawbacks like larger danger zones while grinding. You can change your train car before every level, so you’re free to experiment and see what works for you, as well as what may help you clear certain dares more easily.

One of the game’s most prominent bits of side content is Fernando’s Denshattack fan zine, which you gradually fill out by visiting publishing offices around Japan. He makes a new zine for every region you visit, and fills it with blurbs and photographs obtained by finding the secret film reels in certain levels. These blurbs provide lore and backstory for the game’s setting and characters, particularly the rival gang leaders, though there’s also a lot of actual real-life trivia about Japan’s regions and prefectures, which is pretty interesting to peruse. Also, in every issue, Fernando lets Emi have a dedicated corner for gushing about different types of ramen, which is cute.

Speaking of lore and characters, certain levels have secret second exits that you can uncover by riding particular rail lines, with each one leading to an onsen (that’s a hot spring facility or inn, if you’re not a weeb like me). You can visit the local onsen to let Emi and her gradually-growing gang take a quick shvitz and talk about their lives, which makes for a nice break from all the mad-cap action you’re usually subjected to.

We Got the Funk, You Gotta Have that Funk

I mentioned at the jump that Denshattack! feels very reminiscent of some of the best Dreamcast games, and I think that’s at least part of what makes it so endearing. It is, at its core, a very simple gameplay loop with a healthy curve of difficulty and growth, but the constant commitment to high speed and spectacle a la Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi that keeps the whole thing from dragging. The campaign is a little short as a result of that, taking me about 9 hours to beat, though you can definitely get more out of it if you go back and try to get all the medals and collectibles.

I also definitely have to highlight the game’s incredible soundtrack, for which the devs wrangled an all-star cast of legendary composers and performers, including Sega composer Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. It’s got all the powerful funk energy of Jet Set Radio and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, combined. Seriously, I’m gonna need to see an OST, pronto.

The only particular weak point I can think of for Denshattack! is its English voice track. The performances aren’t terrible, but some of them do come off a bit stilted, which is a shame, because the English cast does include some performers and personalities I’m personally a fan of. It’s not unbearable to just roll with it, but if it bothers you, you can just switch to the Japanese voice track instead, which is fine, as far as I can discern.

Closing Thoughts

Denshattack! may not have the most highbrow story in the world, but you know what it does have? F-U-N, FUN. High-speed, high-flying FUN of the highest caliber. Every aspect of this title's gameplay keeps you roaring along the track at breakneck speeds with constant wacky setpieces and new abilities, to the point that you’ll never be able to predict what it’ll throw at you next. This is a true, blue video game video game; something that is meant to be played and enjoyed just for the thrill of it, and I can definitely see myself booting it up again whenever I get that need for speed.