Nippon Marathon

My honest take on Nippon Marathon is that it only makes full sense the moment a second controller gets plugged in. Solo, it is a hard sell. The story mode follows four gloriously unhinged characters, including a lobster-cosplaying teen named J Darwin and a literal dog-man named Snuguru Maestro who wants to open a dating agency, and their races across Japan are interrupted by unskippable visual novel cutscenes that most reviewers agree range from mildly amusing to actively tedious. If you bought this to grind solo runs, expect diminishing returns within the first hour. Get three friends on the couch, though, and something different happens. The core races are overhead obstacle gauntlets through bullet-train rooftops, supermarkets, and riverside paths, and the controls are deliberately physics-loose in the Gang Beasts mould. You can jump, duck, and dive, and even slight contact with obstacles triggers ragdoll wipeouts that leave you flailing on the ground. Stragglers get eliminated lap by lap until one runner earns a star, then the whole group regroups for the next leg. A popularity scoring system tracks placement, airtime, most bites from the Shiba Inu packs, and other absurd stats, meaning a last-place finish can still generate table-flipping moments. Drop-in, drop-out support means whoever wanders past the TV can grab a pad and join without anyone restarting. Outside the main races, two party modes do a lot of heavy lifting. L.O.B.S.T.E.R. is a randomly generated assault course where players take turns setting distance benchmarks in a horse-style format, earning letters until one person is crowned the loser. Go-Go Trolley is shopping-cart bowling with your ragdoll body as the ball. Neither mode is deep, but both are immediately legible to anyone who has ever held a controller. The L.O.B.S.T.E.R. mode supports up to eight players in hotseat format, which is the most value you will squeeze from this game at a crowded party. The honest criticism is unavoidable: the visuals are rough even by budget-indie standards, the camera can wander off during a race at the worst possible moment, and the single-player content runs thin quickly. Critics landed in mixed-to-unfavourable territory across console versions, and the PC release sits without a Metacritic aggregate at all. The Steam user base, however, skews strongly positive, which tracks with the game's actual use case: a low-stakes, high-laugh local multiplayer session with people who will not interrogate the frame rate. There is no online multiplayer, so if your friends are not in the room, the game has very little left to offer. Mac users should also note the title is not compatible with macOS Catalina (10.15) or above, which is a real limitation worth checking before purchasing. If your Saturday night crew is already comfortable with the deliberate jank of titles like Gang Beasts, Nippon Marathon clicks into that same slot with a uniquely absurd Japanese game-show flavour. Manage the expectation that this is a thirty-minute novelty that earns its keep through chaos rather than craft, and it delivers. Ask it to be a fully rounded game with long-term depth, and it absolutely cannot.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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