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It's Ridge Racer!

Spunky Monkey

By Spunky Monkey,
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nakamura

nakamura

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Ridge V is my all time favourite arcade racer. I utterly adore it. Their may be fewer cars than 4 but they all feel so different. The city felt brilliant too, love how it linked together. 

Also loved the presentation, music and everything. Digital Foundary nailed it with that video. 

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Shimmyhill

Shimmyhill

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Ahhh memory lane, I loved RR and then the home versions esp RR4 as has been said - its great fun on the vita, much better than the actual vita RR!

 

If someone said to me you an have one and only one arcade machine it would still be a sit down RR, mis spent youth playing it instead of college and I still can't pass one on the rare occasions you see one without shoving a quid in - gets loads of goes these days!!

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Fletch

Fletch

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Loved all the PS1 era Ridge games, seeing RR running on a mates new PS was a revelation, I couldn't believe it was there in the home arcade perfect. Then we got addicted to Revolution especially the Spinning Point Mode where we'd take turns to get the highest score.

Then Rage came along, darker and more difficult the handling tweaked and a lot more height variations in the track design and the fantastic oval track which allowed some insane speeds.

Type 4 then showed up and it was another level of awesome pushing the old playstation to her limits, it was such a good game. 

I've not been such a fan of the later Ridges the PS1 era games were where the magic was for me, Namco could do no wrong in that time.

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Yoshimax

Yoshimax

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For me it was all about RR on PS1 then V on JP launch PS2 (that music and the environments were a killer combo), then VI and VII on 360 and PS3 respectively but I splurged all my dough on the 360 music DLC so mained that. Preying for it to hit XB1 BC.

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ryodi

ryodi

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As someone whose introduction to Ridge Racer was the awful Ridge Racer 64, my first experience with the 'real' Ridge Racer was Ridge Racer on PSP which is fantastic and still looks great now. It's a shame the more complete sequel will never come out on PSN and the Ridge Racer Type 4 the EU is stuck with is the 50Hz version.

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Triple A

Triple A

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Ah Ridge Full Scale. Remember playing it at Namco Wonderpark in the West End. That and Galaxian 3 and the various Neo-Geo games. Great place - highly influential.

Ridge 5 was my go-to game for getting pissed up before a big night out. Warming up with plenty of vodka + super-loud Sanodg tunes = Hype Night Out :)

 

I'm still gutted that Rave Racer never got a home version. This track is unfuckingbelievable:

 

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Yoshimax

Yoshimax

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2 hours ago, Triple A said:

I'm still gutted that Rave Racer never got a home version. This track is unfuckingbelievable:

 

 

Shit I said Rave Racer but what I meant was this exhilarating motherfucker of a track:

 

 

Similarly one of the V tracks was Samurai Rocket by Kohta

 

 

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K

K

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Ridge Racer Type 4 was a flipping masterpiece; everything about the game felt right and considered and part of a carefully constructed whole, even down to the menus. The story element in the single-player mode should have been awful, but it was perfectly executed – there was no voice acting, the story bits were short, and they were simple and cheesy, but done completely straight-faced. I challenge anyone not to feel a lump in their throat when their gruff mechanic breaks down in tears just before the last race, and asks you to win one for his dead dad, or whatever the actual story was. The details don’t matter – just that a racing game has actually made you care a bit about the outcome of a race.

 

Also, all the races took place in the run-up to new year’s eve 1999, which fit perfectly with the jazzy house soundtrack and the track aesthetic which took in cool, clear days in the city, and autumnal afternoons in the countryside. It was one of those rare occasions in a driving game when all the elements of the game seem to work together; it felt authored, like it had its own identity.

 

It’s such a shame that there hasn’t been a remake (or at least another RR game with the same aesthetic) and a double shame that the second PSP Ridge Racer game hasn’t been released on the Vita – it didn’t have the mad story mode, but it had all the tracks from RRT4.

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Dig Dug

Dig Dug

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2 hours ago, K said:

Ridge Racer Type 4 was a flipping masterpiece; everything about the game felt right and considered and part of a carefully constructed whole, even down to the menus. The story element in the single-player mode should have been awful, but it was perfectly executed – there was no voice acting, the story bits were short, and they were simple and cheesy, but done completely straight-faced. I challenge anyone not to feel a lump in their throat when their gruff mechanic breaks down in tears just before the last race, and asks you to win one for his dead dad, or whatever the actual story was. The details don’t matter – just that a racing game has actually made you care a bit about the outcome of a race.

 

Also, all the races took place in the run-up to new year’s eve 1999, which fit perfectly with the jazzy house soundtrack and the track aesthetic which took in cool, clear days in the city, and autumnal afternoons in the countryside. It was one of those rare occasions in a driving game when all the elements of the game seem to work together; it felt authored, like it had its own identity.

 

It’s such a shame that there hasn’t been a remake (or at least another RR game with the same aesthetic) and a double shame that the second PSP Ridge Racer game hasn’t been released on the Vita – it didn’t have the mad story mode, but it had all the tracks from RRT4.

I think a lot of what you mentioned is missing from modern driving games. Tetsuya Mizuguchi has said some interesting things about when he was put in charge of the development of Sega Rally by Sega. He saw the development of the 3D technology used in the likes of Sega Rally as a step towards the development of video games towards being considered a piece of media as opposed to a child's play thing. After Sega Rally he kept getting put on more racing game projects until he didn't want to do them anymore, his main complaint with Sega Rally 2 was that he saw the game as just engineering, he couldn't see the creative future in the driving game genre anymore. Had he looked a little harder he might have noticed R4 as the step the genre could have taken towards.

 

I think Ridge Racer as a series burnt out for this reason. After R4 they weren't doing enough with it, Ridge Racer on PSP was excellent but RR2PSP, RR6 and RR7 were just tweaked versions of what existed, the series had hit a creative wall and now the series has lost any major relevance it once had because nothing is changing. Namco seem to run into this issue a lot, Tekken, Soul Calibur and Katamari are 3 other series that have not evolved significantly at all in over a decade, putting out mechanically sound follow ups isn't good enough anymore. That's one of the things that makes R4 so incredible, it represents major change and genre evolution at a time where Namco were absolutely killing it, it wasn't just mechanically fantastic like Tekken 3 was, it was the kind of game evolution that could have carried Ridge Racer into relevance today. I'm dying for another game like that with modern game design and trends in mind.

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Dimahoo

Dimahoo

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9 hours ago, Triple A said:

namco sound team fans may appreciate this, which popped up on my feed this morning. that is nobuyoshi sano by the way, AKA Sanodg AKA Best Synth Guy In Games:

 

 

Thats pretty much how i spend about 40 hours per week.

 

I've nearly got Xevious nailed now.

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gingerling

gingerling

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12 minutes ago, df0 said:

Extremely bare bones without the paid dlc. The vanilla version comes with just 4 tracks or something. Get Ridge Racers for PSP and play that on the Vita.

You can get it the Vita version with all DLC for a bit more than a fiver. Still not worth it?

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