Way back in the mid to late 1990s, when I first got a PlayStation, I owned Ridge Racer, the port of the arcade racer designed to show that the consoles could do just as much as the cabinets could. If you squinted and ignored this or that. It was a great little game, holding plenty of attention until Gran Turismo made itself known, and then never being heard of again.
Ridge Racer Type 4 capped off the console generation with a game arguably better than Gran Turismo, assuming you wanted arcade-style racing. Long before that point, however, the Ridge Racer series was effectively dead to me.
When the PlayStation Portable came to town in 2005 for us Europeans, Ridge Racer was there once more to show off the power of the handheld in a compilation game of sorts, Ridge Racer, or Ridge Racers in its original Japanese.
Yeah, the naming isn't brilliant for this series. Still, I can get behind a game that gathers together the best bits of a series, mainly because I a) only remember a single track from Ridge Racer and b) didn't pick it up for the PSP until a few years ago, second hand. My launch title of choice was Archer Maclean's Mercury if you wanted to know.
Right, let's get these wheels sliding.
Fun Times
In a nod to the original game, and/or a brag about holding the patent on loading screen minigames, Ridge Racer opens with a minigame about collecting flags. It's rubbish. It doesn't even hide any loading - that's the intro videos job, surely.
I can't tell you what I was expecting from Ridge Racer, because I hadn't got a clue what was in store when I booted up my PSP for the first time in years. I'm thrilled is still works, truth be told, and was mighty tempted to take it on the road (well, down to the park, I suppose) to play Ridge Racer on the move. Tempted right up until the clouds came in, and I remembered that it's pretty much still winter up here.
What I can say is that this intro video was quite nice. I need better words than that. It was surprisingly flashy, and I'm not referring to Miss Ridge Racer herself, Reiko Nagase.
I don't see the appeal.
There are two modes in Ridge Racer, the World Tour and a Single Race. I'm not interested in single races, and when most of them and the cars to race on them are locked until making progress in the world tours, our choice is obvious.
These tours are collections of races from tracks of the past. You can't advance until you finish in a particular qualifying position or better. Not the best choice of words, if we're honest, but there isn't any qualifying in an arcade racer, so you'll soon learn to ignore it.
Let's kick off our first tour.
Uh, thanks. Can we do something to change that? Like race?
Car selection is weak at the start, but that's what this game is all about. Newer, better cars from completely fictional manufacturers are locked away behind success, so the sooner we succeed, the better.
The graphics, and the graphic design, in particular, are grabbing my attention. The WipEout games on the PlayStation Vita does this too, the menus have as much care put into them as the games themselves.
Still, we're here to race, and we begin on the only course I know.
I don't know it by name, but that familiar drive into the tunnel before screeching around the corner and taking to the bridge... this is Ridge Racer all right, and there are two things you'll need to get comfortable with.
Drifting is the only way to corner. It's not literally the only way to corner, but it's the only way to corner real nice and come out facing the right direction, more or less. I found myself steering into walls a little too often early on until I got the drifting mechanics down.
Throwing your car into a corner and actually letting its rear end swing out rewards you with lovely tyre squeals and smoke trails. It always seems to be the right drift too. You so rarely overdo or undercook it. Into the corner you go, then you're sideways, then you're out and onto the next straight.
It is quite possibly the greatest drifting in gaming if you're an utter novice at drifting. It's effortless, and it just works. I'm sure by the end of the game we'll be tasked with perfecting it, and different cars have different drifting characteristics, but we're still on the tip of that iceberg.
Frustrations
The more you drift, the more your nitrous oxide system fills up. This is the second thing you need to get comfortable with.
Sadly, it is so underwhelming that it ought to be glossed over. Your screen blurs, the speedometer goes a bit mad, but your car continues to crawl down the track. If a car drives past you and uses its nitrous to do so, you'll almost match it for pace, it's that much of a letdown.
I hope this is only because of it being the first tour, and that it'll become far more important in later stages, but for now, I just use it because it's there to be used. If the drifting knocked my socks off, the nitrous put them back on, slipped my feet into my shoes, and laced my shoes up real tight.
So let's ignore it and get on with the racing.
Further Fun Times
It looks great, perhaps better in screenshots than in motion, but only just. After the race, you can watch yourself in a replay, but the only interaction you have with them is to exit. They're not great replays, but if you want to hear more of the Ridge Racer music, accompanied by engines and screeching, go right ahead.
They're not afraid to use bold camera angles to show off the circuits, either, even when they actually just end up showing how limited the PSP is. To be fair, if you've only ever played a Game Boy, these do look like excellent environments. But, they are just the background to the main event. Your eyes aren't meant to focus on the rubber in the trees, but the rubber on the track. Those trees don't produce rubber, but I'm sticking with it.
Through sandy coastal roads, mountainous climbs and through to the inner city - often all in the same circuit - Ridge Racer shines. I'm digging this game. I owned Gran Turismo on the PSP, and while it looks and plays like a Gran Turismo game, it feels like a bit of a joke at times. Ridge Racer feels like a game that is proud to show off its roots and embrace what it means to be an arcade racer. I'm itching to get back to it on actual hardware, rather than grabbing screenshots via an emulator.
One tour won, we're rewarded with a car that I don't really care for. None of the designs I've seen thus far is wowing me. You know how you stick to a car because of its looks? I'm sticking to this starting car because it's red.
Then I saw the 'change colour' option, picked the better-looking car, cycled through the colours at least four times before settling on the yellow because it felt right. I've no idea what's wrong with me. Onto the next tour! A shorter one, this time around. Two races instead of three, beginning with a reverse course.
Further Frustrations
This is probably the biggest issue with arcade racers for me. Eventually, and sooner than more realistic driving games, they get samey.
Now, Gran Turismo has its reversed tracks, I do not deny that. But it had hundreds of real-world cars and tuning options. It has customizability coming out of its ears even before you run out of circuits in one direction and have to race them backwards. You can't get bored of seeing Trial Mountain again.
But in Ridge Racer, once you've drifted around a circuit, you're pretty much done. It was fun, sure, but do you want to do it again? Ehh... What do I get out of it? Another generic car that you don't care for?
I'll race to unlock tracks, wanting to see the variety that the series has provided in its first decade, but once I've seen them, then what? Does this game have a long life in it?
It looks impressive and has captured my attention for the PSP, more than Ridge Racer itself, but that's still a feat to be acknowledged. Heck, I even got the video out to show you what it's like in motion (and to remind myself that emulation can work flawlessly, sometimes).
Ooh, look. Another dull racing car!
Final Word
58 cars, 8 player wireless support, a time attack mode I forgot about because all racers have a time trial of some description... the back of the Ridge Racer box is doing all the right things to attract the attention of someone who wants a racing package to keep themselves busy with. Its problem is the front of the box.
Ridge Racer is a series whose fanbase is or tends to be Japanese, and it is a series synonymous with arcade racing. You know what you're going to get with a Ridge Racer game, and if that's what you want, great. But when Gran Turismo came westward, I knew what I wanted, and it wasn't found in arcade racers.
But they have their place, and they can still be fun. They can still impress onlookers, they can always engage players for hours on end, and as much as I know I'm probably going to forget about this game in a year, right now, it's great.
That might be the nostalgia for the PSP talking, but I hope it isn't, because Ridge Racer is a love letter to its own series. This game is for fans, as much as it is for fans to desperately get new players to see for themselves. It's not a museum piece of older Ridge Racer titles, but a collection to give you a taste of what to expect, and I like that.
Like I said, I can't wait to get back to it on the PSP itself. Partly for the console, partly because a solid racing title can be found on it in the form of Ridge Racer.
Give it a go, if only for a race or two. You'll like the drifting. I know you will.
FORGET ABOUT THAT
So I'm sat here in bed after having played Ridge Racer for a few straight hours now, which must mean it's pretty bloody good. I mean, have you ever drifted up a mountain, sideways? I have.
Going through the world tour, I unlocked an Assoluto Bisonte. Ooh, did it look good. I take back the generic car thing I said earlier, these machines have won me over. Each belongs to a separate class, denoting their speed, by the looks of it, and a drifting style. Some drift like bricks - sturdy and reliable, but boring through the corners. The Bisonte has never driven straight in its life, and will carry on drifting through the longest of corners.
It's so loose that it showed me that there was a whole mechanic of fine-tuning your direction so that you eek out every possible amount of drift a corner will give you. You can get sliding and just hold the accelerator down, the car doing the cornering for you, save for the odd little nudge to maintain the right amount of drift.
The longer you drift, the quicker your boost fills up, and this too was better than I gave it credit earlier. It seems more useful on the PSP than in emulation, perhaps owing to how blurry the PSP's screen can be in the first place. It's not an absolute night and day difference, but don't take these screenshots as completely accurate.
I've unlocked Pro Tours now, so I suspect the difficulty is going to increase from here on in. Usually, you can race through the field and grab the first position in the first two laps without too much difficulty. I'd imagine that gets tougher.
I hope the AI learns how to drive better, too. They always seem to cut you off, causing you to bump into them and lose speed. Dirty drivers, the lot of them.
What I'm most impressed by, though, is that Ridge Racer is an arcade game that doesn't look like one. The arcade Ridge Racer was so bright it blinded you, and checkpoints were a necessary evil. This Ridge Racer handles like an arcade game, in that it's not realistic and you have fun doing it, but it looks a little more true to life. Colours are subtler, and the graphic design isn't gaudy. The series has evolved in the decade since the original game to become something different, something that I didn't know it to be.
It's arcadey, but it's not so arcadey that I'm feeling bored with it. I've raced on the same tracks in the same cars a few times now, sure, but the circuit designs are all kinds of unique, and I know there are more to unlock. I hope so, at least.
Here's to the next session with it. Will my opinion change when I get demolished by the higher difficulties?
It's arcadey, but it's not so arcadey that I'm feeling bored with it. I've raced on the same tracks in the same cars a few times now, sure, but the circuit designs are all kinds of unique, and I know there are more to unlock. I hope so, at least.
Here's to the next session with it. Will my opinion change when I get demolished by the higher difficulties?
Fun Facts
Most of the Wikipedia article for Ridge Racer focuses on its music. You can choose which CD to slap into the player, each containing a full tracklist of songs, either original beats or remixes of those from the older games.
Ridge Racer, developed by Namco, first released in 2004.
Version played: PlayStation Portable, 2005, also via emulation.