Unlike most games about driving trains, even the ones aimed at kids, or the ones in which the trains are just models, X-Treme Express (also known as Tetsu 1: Densha de Battle! World Grand Prix, though as far as I can tell, there's no connection to the Densha de Go! series, and it definitely wasn't developed or published by Taito) has no interest in providing a verisimilitudinal simulation of passenger train driving. Instead, it's not just a game about racing trains, but about aggressively racing them. What's interesting is that the developers made the wise decision that this premise alone was silly enough, and didn't feel the need to add to it. So you've got somewhat realistic-looking trains from around the world, racing each other in various locations that all look like they're in Japan, but no power up items or any other overtly videogamey stuff like that.
Being trains, you don't have complete control over where your vehicles go at any time. Instead, you mostly control the speed of your train, slowing down at corners to avoid derailment (or you can play on easy mode, where you can't derail youself), and changing tracks at switching points when they occur. That's where the aggression comes into things: time things just right, and you can ram into the side of one of your fellow competitiors, forcing them off of the track. Alternatively, if you've got a lead and there's another train close behind you, you can stubborn stay in front of them, never giving a chance to overtake in a much more mean-spirited way than if you were driving regular road vehicles.
An important thing for racing games is a sense of speed, and really, that's one of the first things that'll hit you regarding X-Treme Express: when you're going full speed down a straight bit of track (or any bit of track in easy mode), you're really hurtling along in a way that real life trains never seem to, and the fact that you are driving a train at such breakneck speeds really adds to the manic feel of it all. With the lack of steering in mind, other than managing your speed to stay on the track, and shunting rivals to knock them off of it, I think a big part of the strategy is to try and place yourself on lines that have more downhill parts than uphill, though its possible that this only provides a minor boost to your speed, if any at all.
As well as the main grand prix mode, there's also a free mode, where you can just ride a track at any time of day, and can even turn off opponents for a more relaxing time, there's also event races with special rules like "no shunting" or "shunt every opponent to win", both of which I think show how important aggression is to the game. You start the game with a choice of thirty trains and six tracks, but looking at the "game data" screen in options shows that there's apparently a total of eighty trains in the game, and ten tracks! Furthermore, when I went online to seek more information, I could only find a conversation that brough back memories of the Dragonball GT Final Bout myths that were going around circa the turn of the century: apparently if you complete grand prix with all eighty trains, placing first in every race with no retries, you can unlock a gun that lets you derail trains infront of you by pressing L2. That sounds like nonsense, and I'm definitely not the person who's going to go and find out either way.
X-treme Express is a unique little game, with a lot of idiosyncracies that make take a couple of goes to get used to, but once you do, you'll find that it's a fast, fun, weird game, and definitely worth your time. Maybe not hundreds and hundreds of hours of your time, but a few of them, at least. I'm surprised it doesn't come up in conversations about weird and interesting PS2 games more often, alongside the likes of Demolition Girl and Seigi no Mikata and so on. Maybe that'll change from now on, though?
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