
It's remarkable to think about, given Steam's ubiquity in the PC gaming space and the sheer number of Densha De Go! games produced over the years, but right now there's currently no way to buy any of Taito's classic Japanese simulation titles over on Valve's storefront.
It's a fact that came as a pretty big surprise to me when I first bothered to look, having simply assumed that its publishers would at the very least have brought one of its older PC games to the platform, if not a port of the 2017 arcade game Densha de Go!! to capitalise on the sizable simulation fanbase on the platform.
As a result, in the absence of anything official, it's mostly fallen to indie developers to plug the gap, with the latest I've come across being Barely Making Games' Retro Rail Go! (a title I first heard about thanks to stumbling across a random post from the freelance writer Kerry Brunskill on BlueSky).
Labelled a "heartfelt tribute to classic Japanese train sims", Retro Rail Go! is a title coming to Steam Early Access in the near future, and is described as featuring "chunky low‑poly visuals" and "retro sound design," in the hopes of capturing "the playful charm of 90s console railroading."
According to the Steam page, the finished game will feature a range of "additional train types" to pick from and three diverse routes "drawn from Japanese rail traditions" to pick from, including "city metros, suburban corridors, and scenic regional lines."
However, only two of each will be available to players when the game launches in Early Access, with the developer stating that it hopes to gather "feedback on train behaviour, station flow, UI, and overall feel" to further "tune the experience and ensure it lives up to the charm and nostalgia it's inspired by," before releasing a final version.
There will also be two different modes of play to pick from, depending on what you want out of the experience; one of which will be a "Casual Mode" with relaxed schedules and a generous amount of time to relax and take in the experience, while the other is a "Professional Mode" with "strict timetables, realistic signals, station announcements, and dual‑notch acceleration/braking [that demands] precision."
A Steam demo of the game was released earlier this month and is available to try out now. Here's a trailer: