If you've read any of my writing for the GameDaily Anime Games Guide, you probably know I'm an anime fan. I watch imported anime (I can't stand US voice actors) and I read translated manga. While most anime-based games could be a bit better, I still own several imported anime game titles. If you're a racing game fan, you may have played Sega's Initial D racing game in arcades. It's a solid game based on the anime and it's also available for the PlayStation 2 in Japan. After picking up the import and seeing how popular the game is in arcades across the US, it's a wonder why the game never made it to the US, but that's beside the point.

When Electronic Arts showed off Need For Speed Carbon to a room full of enthusiast press last week, I was taken aback by what I saw. NFS Carbon is your typical NFS title with a lot of similarities to Most Wanted. However, the major addition this year seems to have been taken directly from Initial D. You'll be racing around sharp curves on steep mountain passes where death could be your next stop if you take a turn too sharply. This is Initial D to a perfect tee. Sure, it also borrows a page from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but Initial D pre-dates that by a fair amount of time, even in the US.

The basic premise of Carbon is fairly simplistic. You've been out of town for a long time, and now you're back to reclaim lost fame. While you've been gone, the city has turned into a war zone between racers. In a similar fashion to Need For Speed Most Wanted, the city has been divided up into multiple areas where you can participate in street races against rival drivers. However, when it comes to settling matters once and for all, you'll have to take your driving skills off of the streets and into the canyons surrounding the city.

Need For Speed has had a drifting mode for some time now, but you'll really need to hone your drifting skills to perfection if you want to do well in the canyon. True to Initial D, you'll be using advanced drifting techniques to take corners at high speeds, but if you lose control you'll jet off the cliff and crash magnificently like you were playing a game of Burnout. While I was a bit disappointed that Carbon seems to borrow so heavily from Initial D, aside from the arcade title, US gamers have had little experience with the superb racing style Initial D offers. It's nice to see EA adding that style to the hugely popular Need For Speed franchise.

Electronic Arts showed a brief demo of the game running on PlayStation 3 hardware, and it really didn't look that much better than Most Wanted on the Xbox 360. In fact, any differences were minor and hardly noticeable. That isn't to say the game didn't look good, but if you were thinking the PS3 version would blow the Xbox 360 build out of the water, you may be mistaken when the game ships later this year. To be fair, what was shown was an early PS3 build, so the visuals could vastly improve by the time the game hits retail, but for now things are looking about the same for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Another new feature in Carbon is something car enthusiasts are going to go ape for. The level of customization in Carbon is unmatched in any console racing game to date. Like previous NFS titles you can customize your ride with new rims, spoilers, decals and just about anything else. The same applies to Carbon only this time you have complete control over the modifications. Instead of simply choosing eight inch rims, you'll be able to manually adjust the size of the rims with the analog stick to make them match perfectly to your liking. The same level of customization can be applied to every car mod from the size and shape of the spoiler to the intake to the front grill. As your progress through the single player story mode you'll unlock deeper levels of customization.

EA only showed off a little snippet of Need For Speed Carbon, but what was shown really opens things up for racing game fans. You've got everything from Most Wanted, as well as the new canyon races from Initial D and the deepest level of customization yet. Multiplayer is a given, but EA isn't providing many details at this point. Be sure to stay with us as we'll be keeping a close eye on the progress of NFS Carbon over the coming months.