Ridge Racer series

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JaySevenZero
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Ridge Racer series

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for the Ridge Racer series for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Iain[Ian]Ianson
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Re: 587: Ridge Racer series

Post by Iain[Ian]Ianson »

The first Ridge Racer is still the one for me.

Revolution is okay, but looks a bit like modded content. I find the track geometry strangely messy looking, and various corner sequences lacking in ‘flow’ for lack of a better word. Maybe I’m just rubbish.

Rage is where a bit of bloat came in, with an upgrade system that seemed more laborious than just having cool new cars to pick. And unfortunately some of the worst car sounds I’ve ever heard. Despite some amazing looking corners, I found it all looked unpleasantly dark.

Type4, while no doubt being an artistic and technical accomplishment I fell off of after trying to force myself to enjoy for quite a few hours. The pretty but fairly glacial menus, boring dialogue between races and replacing the original handling with something slightly neutered contributed to me just going back to the original, which I continue to play over and over to this day.

It was jaw dropping on release, and for me today, is basically a perfect retro video game.

I would do absolutely anything for an M2 port of the original game on the Switch. ANYTHING.

Edit: Have finally been playing the NTSC Ridge Racer V on my newly hacked PS2. Kinda feels like a ‘next-gen’ sequel to the first game in many ways.
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seansthomas
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Re: 587: Ridge Racer series

Post by seansthomas »

Games cost so much money on Playstation as a kid, that when you got one, you knew you had about 6 months until you could get another. So you sure as hell got good at them.

I rarely mastered many though in that era, often seeing end credits but not being able to say 'i was great at that'. But by God, did I sink some hours into Ridge Racer. So many in fact, that I managed to pull off 3 back to back perfect laps and keep the black car that normally overtook you on lap 2 behind me until the chequered flag. And it was one of my greatest achievements in gaming ever. I felt like a God.

Never pulled it off again. Once was enough.

Ridge Racer peaked for me at that point. I rented but didn't overly like Revolution. Rage Racer was good but never gelled in the same way. Type 4 looked and sounded the part, pushing the PS1 to it's limit. But I think I prefer my racing games to have fewer, better tracks that ask you to master them than dozens to burn through once or twice.

As a statement of intent, Ridge Racer was immense. It told every kid in the world that you could now play arcade quality games in your living room. And it was amazing.
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Alex79
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Re: 587: Ridge Racer series

Post by Alex79 »

The only Ridge Racer games I've ever really played for more than a couple of minutes were Type 4 on the PS1 and the PSP game. As someone who generally prefers racers towards the more simulation end of things it was never going to quite hit the spot for me. There are a handful of arcade racers I've enjoyed over the years, but Ridge Racer is just about as 'arcade' as you can get. I always found the game felt more like controlling a rectangle or a bar of soap drifting around corners than driving a car. I think that just steering the car from left to right feels heavy and sluggish, there was nothing light or nippy about any of the cars. It's not a series I have any particular affection for, and even as an arcade racer, I think the likes of Outrun 2 supercede it in every way.

THREE WORD REVIEW: Imperial Leather Racer.

EDIT: I had a look back at old posts I'd made, and I clearly seemed to enjoy Ridge Racer at the time! It's bizarre how some things either grow or sour in your mind over the years! Ridge Racer on the PSP was technically really impressive and impressed me enough to want to get a PSP. I tried playing it again a few years back though and was obviously much less enthusiastic!
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shadowless_kick
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Re: 587: Ridge Racer series

Post by shadowless_kick »

three-word review: seriously awesome soundtrack (Ridge Racer Type 4 )
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Joey Jo Jo Jr
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Re: 587: Ridge Racer series

Post by Joey Jo Jo Jr »

A latecomer to the series, my first experience was with Ridge Racer 3D, which I got cheap in a 3DS bundle when the console launched. Had zero expectations for the game but it ended up being one of my most played games on the system, helping me get through the 3DS’s early dry spell! An under-appreciated highlight of the launch lineup in my opinion.

Of those I’ve since played Ridge Racer 7 is my absolute favourite. Something about that PS2 era art style rendered in 1080p 60fps that I think still looks brilliant to this day. Was pleasantly surprised booting it up the other day to see the online mode is still going and somewhat active!
Have to give special mention to the PSP games also, still can’t believe a portable game from 2004 could look that good!

Can only hope Namco return to the series in the near future, fingers crossed for a revival for the next-gen Switch!
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AndrewElmore
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Re: 587: Ridge Racer series

Post by AndrewElmore »

Having been born the same year as Ridge Racer's arcade debut, one of my earliest memories is of seeing the PlayStation port running at my cousins' house. The vibrant colors, energetic music, and blistering speed certainly captured the attention of my stimulus-craving toddler brain. But there was something else captivating me that I didn't have the words for at the time, of course. Ridge Racer has a phenomenal sense of place that has always been deeply compelling to me. I want to stay at that hotel on the beach and watch the sun sink into the sea. I want to grab dinner at "Italian Tomato" and watch the high powered racing machines fly by the windows and disappear into the tunnel at the end of the road. I want to take a walk along the ridges with a camera and take pictures of that suspension bridge. I want to sit on the side of the road and play Galaga on that giant screen hanging on the building in front of the starting line. I love Seaside Route 765's little intricacies, from the shutokou highway section, to the mysterious cars heading the opposite direction in that first tunnel. To this day a part of me wonders where they're going every time I drive a version of that track. I love the way the track has been remade and re-interpreted over and over through the years. But that's a Ridge Racer hallmark, isn't it? Content repeated, remixed, and re-contextualized with each new release. I see how people that aren't already fans of the series would see that as a severe issue, but for me it only contributes to the very specific identity of the series.

To speak of gameplay, there are a few different eras of Ridge Racer. The first few games can be a bit difficult to get used to, as their feel is very unique. The PS1 games in particular are very thoughtfully built around the d-pad. The longer you hold down a direction, the sharper the steering angle becomes. Drifting involves slipping your car's rear end out sideways and letting it get pulled around an invisible rail of sorts, then letting go of the wheel completely and holding the accelerator and watching the car magically get pulled back into place. If you time it incorrectly you stand to lose a lot of speed, but if you let the car pull itself back into place, you'll keep zooming at hilariously unrealistic speeds. I love it so much. Because of that invisible rail, you can spin your car the opposite direction and do impossible 360 flatspins while drifting, it's as exhilarating as it is gleefully stupid. Video games at their finest.

I need to address the elephant in the room that is R4: Ridge Racer Type 4. The game is a towering presence of form and function. Arguably the singular magnum opus of the arcade racing genre. R4 is a beautiful expression of class and speed. It takes all the pomp and circumstance of the gratuitous amounts of money inherent to motorsports, and creates a dreamlike exaggeration of that atmosphere that's baked in perpetual sunrises and sunsets, scored by some of the most extravagant acid jazz ever crafted. R4 is an intricate study in art direction and aesthetic development. As a visual designer for video games, I can't help but stand in awe of the menus and UI, the way they so elegantly hold together the game's entire mood. This is the kind of Ridge Racer game where the cars have AKIRA-style red light trails as they fly sideways around hairpin corners up and down mountains, or along the waterfronts of a commercial port, or across the cobbled streets of a cartoonish approximation of a vaguely European city of indeterminable age. Namco made the conscious choice to manually overhaul the way the game controls, and its kinesthetics are staggering. The drifting mechanics are much more intuitive. They flow in and out. They're built entirely around feel instead of mechanical execution. The car is an extension of your hands, especially in the first-person bumper cam view. The game was also developed for the joGcon, a controller with a big thumb wheel in the center that's equipped with powerful force-feedback. It's a strange way to experience the game, as it allows you to feel the resistance of the road, and the g-forces of your car in your hands. It's a fascinating way to remove layers of digital abstraction and put your physical body more directly in conversation with the whole experience. Namco's neGcon (neh-jee-cone) also works for R4, as it does for every PS1 and PS2 game in the series, though in my opinion the amount of direct control it gives you makes the game far too easy, and it's already arguably the easiest Ridge Racer game. I was so enamored with R4 that I found myself overrun by inspiration, and spent my 2018 crafting an audible love letter to the game with an album I released in December of that year called Real Racing Roots 2019. It's 17 tracks of music inspired by R4, because I wanted there to be more music out there that sounded like R4's soundtrack. The soundtrack was so good that I found myself incapable of ignoring the urge to make more music in that vein. Thankfully that record found something of an audience, and I was able to (digitally) meet some of the kind folks from Namco's Sound Team and have some conversations where I was able to directly thank them for the massive impact their work had on me as an artist, as a game developer, and as a person.

To briefly touch on some other series highlights: I love Rage Racer's grungy aesthetics and dedication to huge waterfalls and delightfully impractical hill climbs. It's the only Ridge Racer game I prefer to play in manual transmission, the way I normally prefer to play almost every racing game. I love Revolution's commitment to being even more colorful and sunset-obsessed than the first game--it feels like a spiritual successor to OutRun to some degree. I love the way all of Ridge Racer V's courses overlay on top of each other to form a whole city, and for being the very first PS2 game to go gold, it's a magnificent display of the system's power. The lack of anti-aliasing that was a complaint in reviews of the time have helped it to age with remarkable grace, it scales very well to modern displays now with razor sharp pixels. I love that the PSP games are a beautiful love letter to the entire series, even if the nitrous boost mechanic kind of threw the rest of the series out of whack for the foreseeable future. I love that Ridge Racer 7 is just a Director's Cut of sorts for Ridge Racer 6, but runs at a gorgeous 1080p 60fps on the PlayStation 3, a rare treat for the hardware. It's also still got a few folks playing online at any given moment, which is fun! Even if they're all much better than me, of course.

I would love to see Ridge Racer make a return, I feel like my very heart belongs to these games in a way that's difficult to parse. It's easy to be cynical about the idea of a Ridge Racer 8, but the masterful revival of Ace Combat a few years ago gives me hope that there are people within Namco who really, truly understand what these games are. They are, after all, sister series to some extent. There are plenty of allusions across both franchises insinuating they may take place in the same universe, and here in the real world it certainly feels like they grew up together. They shared a lot of artists and musicians and production staff, it's hard not to feel like the fates and histories of Ridge Racer and Ace Combat are closely entwined. Here's hoping Ridge Racer returns with a mighty entrance some day soon!
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