Ridge Racer DS was the series’ third launch game, this time for the Nintendo DS in 2004. Aside from updated visuals, the ability to customise your racing team in the game’s career mode and a particularly diverse soundtrack meant to create an “exciting new experience” to “point to the future of the next generation of consoles”, Ridge Racer V was just another Ridge Racer. Ridge Racer V wasn’t a very distinct entry in the series, though few of them were after the beloved R4: Ridge Racer Type 4.
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This better suited Sony’s focus on more realistic gaming experiences with the PS2 and its “Emotion Engine”, a CPU designed to more efficiently render 3D environments for more “emotive” games. It was closer in style to the series’ oddly-titled second entry Rage Racer – darker, grittier, all that jazz you obviously want from a racing game. The series’ second launch title was Ridge Racer V for the PlayStation 2 in 2000. If you’re picking up a new console and knew you liked the series, why not pick up Ridge Racer? You know what you’re getting, you know it’s fun and you know it will show off the power of your brand-new hardware. In this way, it makes sense that Ridge Racer became such a common launch game.
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With four Ridge Racer games releasing for the PlayStation in as many years, these rules were firmly underlined. Every entry is meant to meet these criteria when you pick up a Ridge Racer game, it should include these three things. Overall, Ridge Racer laid down three defining traits or “rules” for the series: visceral arcade racing, dazzling visuals and fantastic original music. The first Ridge Racer immediately defined everything about the eventual series: high-speed arcade racing where you drift around corners to keep your speed up a vibrant, realistic look with car models and tracks that were entirely fictional tracks set on mountain roads and other natural Outrun– and Daytona USA-esque backdrops instead of closed circuits and bangin’ techno soundtracks.
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It was another way that Ridge Racer showed off the PSX, supporting an exclusive peripheral that you couldn’t find on any other console.
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The neGcon was a weird but supposedly wicked motion controller designed for racing games, imitating analog-stick controls in racing games by letting you twist each half of the pad in opposite directions. Ridge Racer was also the first game to support the neGcon, a controller released by Namco around the same time. Ridge Racer also saw an updated version and two sequels on the PlayStation, as well as an expanded port on the Nintendo 64 which, bizarrely, released five years later in 2000. Though it was released in arcades in 1993, the faithful PSX port was a huge success and has been credited with the console’s early lead over the Sega Saturn.
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The original Ridge Racer was both the first entry in the series and its first launch title, releasing alongside the PlayStation in 1994 (Japan) and 1995 (everywhere else). Of the 22 games in the series – some of them being ports or updates of other entries – eight were also launch titles, so we’re here to investigate exactly what makes this iconic arcade racer so well-suited to the next-generation transition. Namco’s Ridge Racer series has a real knack for launching alongside new consoles.