Fast and Furious: Arcade Edition Review - A Thrilling But Flawed Racing Experience

Raw Thrills has been the go-to company for arcade games in the last twenty years, with their games being some of the few to get home releases in the modern age. We've seen Cruis'n Blast hit the Switch in 2021, while their TMNT: Wrath of the Mutants effort was released last year and now the 2022 Fast and Furious arcade release is here across consoles. Fast and the Furious: Arcade Edition is the newest incarnation of the franchise in arcades and uses the Cruis'n Blast engine while the first Fast and Furious arcade release was later released on the Wii as Cruis'n to get the game on shelves without the license, so it's a bit of a fitting fate that we'd see something rooted in the Cruis'n series gets its original Fast and Furious license on consoles.

The license itself isn't of the utmost importance -- the logo font is used throughout and "missions" are given to the races as a framework to fit the Fast and Furious license's more outlandish storyline points. It's odd in to have a racing game where the goal isn't just "get to the finish in first place," but in execution, this does work out the exact same way and just gives you a little two second cinematic whether you succeed or fail. Winning is ideal because getting first place in every track unlocks a better version of your chosen vehicle with a different paint job and more turbos, basically giving you a God mode-style car to run roughshod with.

Furious First-Person Fun

Like countless arcade racers before it, Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition offers up a blend of vehicle types and tracks with various difficulty-separated designations. There are six total tracks and eight vehicles, with that number jumping to sixteen if you count the Furious version as a separate vehicle. It's a bit of a stretch, but Daytona USA had two cars stretched out over many more thanks to hidden vehicles, so there's a precedent for those all counting as different vehicles. My favorite is the Corvette because it's got a lot of speed, but I enjoy the Charger as well as both offer a nice blend of speed and traction. Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition offers a mixed blend of fun and frantic action across its car lineup.

With this being a follow-up gameplay-wise to Cruis'n Blast, I was looking forward to racing around the streets in a similar fashion, but the handling model here is different. There, the handling was far more nuanced and smoother overall, but with Fast & Furious, the steering is overly-sensitive and no amount of tweaking the sensitivity makes it feel quite 1:1 with your movements. The best balance I could find was taking the sensitivity to 40% and that at least gave me a sense that I had some control over the vehicle in real-time. The same holds true for car switching to see if going from a Corvette to an off-road truck led to a different gameplay feel in that regard and it really didn't. No matter what vehicle was chosen, the handling was slightly off compared to other racers and that was even more true with motion control. Generally, motion controls can be a fantastic way to try something different and play the game with a different mindset.

Smashin' glass and ruling the race

Using motion controls allows the player to minimize stick usage in favor of something that may in theory be better because you can be more granular in your physical movement of the controller versus the stick, where you'll naturally have less nuanced movement. Here, no matter what control method you choose, your vehicle will have a tendency to dart around too much even when you're anticipating it and know you need to dial back your stick movement or controller movement, but nothing is enough to get things feeling natural. You're always somewhat fighting the game to steer the car where you want it and motion controls make the somewhat unpredictable steering more unwieldy than it should be. They can be implemented well as games like Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart World have shown, but steering is so wonky here that I'm surprised an auto-steering option wasn't put in like the arcade-styled Asphalt series.

Fast and Furious: Arcade Edition offers a mixed blend of fun and frantic action.

The core gameplay between the racing and stunts does manage to be more fun than the sum of the flawed parts, though. The iffy handling hobbles the fun, but the sheer on-track insanity and fast racing action make up for that. It's surprising to see the handling even be an issue though as Blast controlled just fine, but I can see issues cropping up because it's a ported game not being brought over by the original devs, and it might take an update or two to fine-tune the handling over time. The track selection is nice and having six tracks to work with spread out over the world allows for both a visual feast for the eyes, but also one for the ears with all the variety in the music.

Blasting through the world

Fast & Furious' visuals are a blend of impressive and disappointing. Things like the car models shining brightly and the pace never slowing down are hurt by blurry textures during things like soaring moments over maps before hitting a new part of the track or a new set piece. Zooming through a neon pink-lit tunnel looks stunning, and then your next track might have you soaring over blurry geysers as they shoot water up around the track in a display that's impressive when you think about it, but also hurt by the rough textures. Thankfully, it's an issue that doesn't creep up much in real-time action, but does stick out a bit more after the fact. There's a lot going on in the game world, but the lack of detail is a mixed bag because it likely allows framerates to remain solid at the expense of visual fidelity. The inclusion of a first-person view is welcome too, as it makes the action more frantic in that viewpoint.

While Cruis'n Blast went for a bombastic soundtrack that has honestly aged wonderfully and stands out in a sea of licensed songs, Fast and Furious Arcade leans more towards songs that fit the flavor of the locales. The best of the bunch is Havana with its salsa-inspired music that would be right at home with the Miami Vice reboot movie from '06 or Colombia's fast-paced tunes that get the blood pumping as well. There's a strangely muted sound to the music, where unless you go into the settings and manually change the sound mix, it gets drowned out by the announcer voices and the engine noise, but at least that's something the player can correct a bit. The sound design as a whole is strong, with loud impacts when you crash into rivals and a nasty scraping sound when you hit a wall constantly, so there was a good amount of effort put into that and it holds up nicely in this port.

Closing Comments:

Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is a good racing game at its core hurt by lackluster porting and a lack of content. While Raw Thrills' prior arcade effort, Cruis'n Blast, got a healthy increase in content going over to consoles, this game did not and it hurts the long-term lifespan. As an arcade racing fanatic, it's easy to get a lot of use out of the game for years, but casual racing fans will want to look towards a meatier arcade-style racing game.

3.5/5

Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition

Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch

Racing

Arcade

Action

Systems

OpenCritic Reviews: Top Critic Avg: 52/100 Critics Rec: 24%

Released: October 24, 2025
ESRB: Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence
Developer(s): GameMill Entertainment
Publisher(s): GameMill Entertainment
Multiplayer: Local Multiplayer

11 Images

Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition delivers high-speed racing and adrenaline-fueled action straight from the arcade to console!

Choose from licensed supercars and tear through intense, cinematic tracks packed with shortcuts, stunts, missions, and explosive surprises. Race solo or go head-to-head in thrilling 2-player split-screen. With drifting, nitro boosts, and precision driving, this is the ultimate pick-up-and-play racing experience for fans of pure, unfiltered speed!

Key Game Features:

• High-Speed, Adrenaline-Fueled Arcade Racing
Race across high-intensity tracks in licensed supercars with cinematic style, drifting, nitro boosts, and precision driving that captures the thrill of the original arcade classic.

• The Top Tier Arcade Racer, Brought to Console
Experience the full-throttle thrills of the arcade game at home, now optimized for consoles and with the same explosive action that made the original a fan favorite in arcades.

• Race Iconic Vehicles
Hit the road in 8 legendary cars including the Dodge Charger, Corvette Z06, Shelby GT500 KR, Ford GT, Bronco DR, Jeep Wrangler, and more.

• Customize Your Look, Your Way
Style your ride with custom vehicle color schemes that let you stand out on the track and represent your personality.

• Race Together in Local Multiplayer
Grab a friend and hit the track with 2 players in split-screen local multiplayer, bringing the arcade rivalry home with side-by-side action and nonstop competition.

• Dominate Fierce High-Intensity Courses
Burn rubber through all the original tracks in bold, diverse environments that push your driving skills to the limit.

• Tackle Secret Missions Around the World
Complete bonus challenges with explosive objectives like stopping a missile in the Swiss Alps or grounding a plane in Hong Kong.

• Unleash Chaos with Hidden Shortcuts
Discover destructible environments, branching paths, and sneaky shortcuts that shake up every race and reward risk-taking drivers.