Ridge Racer (series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since June 2006.

Ridge Racer on the PlayStation

Ridge Racer is a series of arcade racing games developed and published by Namco for both the arcade and various consoles.

Ridge Racer uses tracks which take place in the fictional city of Ridge City. Ridge City contains varied landscapes such as cities, beaches, woods, and mountains. In some of the earlier games, all of the tracks share the same starting line and finish line, but open or close off different parts of the track to yield a different course. The soundtrack predominantly features fairly up-beat techno music composed by Namco in-house artists.

[edit] List of Ridge Racer games

[edit] Arcade games

• Ridge Racer (7 October 1993), for Namco System 22
• Ridge Racer Full Scale (1994), for Namco System 22, controlled by a real automobile
• Ridge Racer 2 (16 June 1994), for Namco System 22, an update to the original arcade game with multiplayer support, remixed soundtrack, and a rear view mirror
• Rave Racer (16 July 1995), for Namco System 22
• Ridge Racer V: Arcade Battle (2000), for Namco System 246

[edit] Console games

• Ridge Racer (1994 - Japan, 1995 - USA/EU), for PlayStation, similar to the arcade with an optional 3rd person view (Launch Game). Debut of 13th Racing.
• Ridge Racer Revolution (1995 - Japan, 1996 - USA/EU), for PlayStation. 13th Racing Kid and White Angel made their grand debut in this game, challenging you in the game's Time Trial mode. Soundtrack was taken from the Ridge Racer 2 arcade game.
• Rage Racer (1996 - Japan, 1997 - USA/EU), for PlayStation. This game marked the debut of the retries rule and customization aspects.
• R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (1998 - Japan, 1999 - USA/EU), for PlayStation, following the Rage Racer formula, but instead of customization, there are four racing teams to choose from.
• Ridge Racer V (2000), for PlayStation 2 (Launch Game), follows the original Ridge Racer in many aspects, basically Ridge Racer for PS2 but modernized.
• Ridge Racer 64 (2000), for Nintendo 64, features the original ridge racer tracks, a remixed set of RRR tracks, and its very own R64 set of desert tracks.
• Ridge Racer DS (2004 - USA), for Nintendo DS, a port of Ridge Racer 64 with the additional feature of being able to steer by using the touch screen
• Ridge Racers (2004 - Japan, 2005 - USA/EU), for PlayStation Portable (Launch Game)
• Ridge Racer 6 (2005), for Xbox 360 (Launch Game)
• Ridge Racers 2 (2006), for PlayStation Portable
• Ridge Racer 7 (2006), for PlayStation 3 (Launch Game)

[edit] Trivia

• Cars in the Ridge Racer games are decorated with logos from various other Namco games.

• All the games feature "mascot girls". In the first few games, this was Reiko Nagase. In Ridge Racer V she was replaced by Ai Fukami, but Reiko is back in Ridge Racers on Sony PSP and in Ridge Racer 6 on Xbox 360, and again for Ridge Racer 7 on the PS3.

• Ridge Racer Full Scale features a red Eunos Roadster (the Japanese version of a Mazda Miata or MX-5) in front of which the game is projected on a wide screen. The car's steering, accelerator, and brake are connected to the game. The car itself does not move, but its brakelights work. The game has been modified to depict the Eunos Roadster as the player's vehicle.

• Ridge Racer Revolution uses the soundtrack from the arcade Ridge Racer 2, albeit with different courses.

• Ridge Racer 64 contains subtle cameos from a few Transformers characters, such as Optimus Prime, occasionally spotted in vehicle mode across bridges and in other places.

• Ridge Racer Type 4 includes a bonus disc containing a new version of the original Ridge Racer game, named Ridge Racer Turbo, (known in Europe as Ridge Racer Hi-Spec Demo) which runs at 60 frames per second with improved graphics models. Special editions of this game were also packaged with the Namco JogCon controller, Limited Edition package of this game is especially very hard to find now, and the North American boxes are numbered by an official Namco sticker, seen when you open the flap of the box.

• In Ridge Racer Revolution, if you can place first on all three tracks (Novice, Intermediate, and Expert), three supercars challenge you. Novice pits you against 13th Racing (a black exotic with a gold devil silhouette on its hood), Intermediate against 13th Racing Kid (a smaller version of 13th Racing with the same gold devil silhouette shared with the car described above), and Expert has you against the fastest car in the game, White Angel (a fast, white exotic with a turquoise angel silhouette on its hood which has a top speed of 368 mph in Ridge Racer V as the Kamata Angelus). Defeating these cars makes them accessible to the player. This mechanic of obtaining defeatable 'bonus' cars has been utilized in subsequent Ridge Racer games.

• What's also interesting is that 13th Racing debuted in the first Ridge Racer with White Angel debuting in Revolution along with the now-defunct 13th Racing Kid, but around Ridge Racer V, 13th Racing was rebadged as the Rivelta Crinale (acquired by beating Devil on Green Field in Duel) and White Angel, as explained above, was rebadged as the Kamata Angelus (acquired by beating Angel on Sunny Beach in Duel--at night).

• Strangely enough in Ridge Racer DS, White Angel is strangely named "Galaxian Paradise", while in Ridge Racer 64, 13th Racing is called "Lizard Nightmare".

• Ridge Racer was used as a demonstration for the PlayStation Portable's new PS1 emulation service/software during Sony's press conference at E³ 2006.

[edit] Criticism

Ridge Racer in the past has sometimes been criticized of an overly arcade oriented style of game play. An example of this is the fact that one could enter a hairpin turn at over 100 MPH (160 km/h) and powerslide through while maintaining most of the speed one entered the corner with.

Another common complaint is the "pinball effect" which happens when a car comes into contact with another car (or objects like a wall or fence) causing it to bounce off like a pinball. This unrealistic effect was reduced but not totally wiped out in games like R4: Ridge Racer Type 4, Ridge Racer V and even the recent Ridge Racer 7.

A criticism of the original games for the PlayStation were that the opponent racers did not have any 'intelligent' artificial intelligence, but rather, were set to race on a line in a particular track, and not break from that line. Different opponents were assigned different waypoints around the track and only deviated from the waypoint when the player interacted with them and forced them off of the waypoint.

[edit] External links

• Ridge Racer DS Official Namco site
• Ridge Racer Official Namco site
• Ridge Racer 6 Official Namco site
• Namco Games Official Namco site for the cell phone game
• IGN Ridge Racers 2 announcement
• Ridge Racer series at MobyGames