Midnight Club: Street Racing is a racing video game developed by Angel Studios and published by Rockstar Games. The game focuses on competitive street racing and the import scene. The game was released for the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance platforms, the former being a launch title for the platform. It is the first game in Midnight Club franchise, followed by Midnight Club II.
The title of this series is a reference to the Japanese street racing team Mid Night Club.[citation needed] In the late 1990s, they were infamous for their high-speed runs down the Bayshore Route on Tokyo's Shuto Expressway, which is why the "Wangan" (Bayshore) kanji is also included in the title, although it is also a shout-out to Wangan Midnight, as the "midnight" portion of the logo is stylized similarly.[citation needed] Curiously, the few Japanese releases of the Midnight Club games (the first game and both Los Angeles and LA Remix) omit the kanji from the logo, presumably to avoid potential rights issues with Wangan Midnight rights owners Kodansha.