When you think of "racing games" these days, which title comes to mind? Is it the old money printing machine "Mario Kart", the PS-rated "Gran Turismo", or one of the XBOX signatures "Forza Motorsport", or EA's famous "Need for Speed"? Although there are still many racing games born today, when it comes to this genre, I think most gamers first think of one of the four giants above.
There was also a well-known racing game that was once the benchmark in the industry, sweeping the arcade, home console, and handheld worlds, and being revered as a masterpiece by countless racing game enthusiasts. It does not pursue the so-called realism of racing, but starts from the gameplay, focusing on the excitement and refreshment brought by drifting and other operations. This game is Namco's Ridge Racing. Ridge Racing has been dormant for years, but a recent rumor has brought it back on the radar. Roughly speaking, there is a leaker who claims to be an industry insider, who previewed the matter in advance before Capcom released "Monster Hunter Wildland" earlier this month, and then he also broke the news about NS2's performance-related parameters, and "Ridge Racing" will be the first game of NS2.
The specific breaking information can be found in our previous news, and I will not repeat it here. Compared with those rumors that my grandmother can make up 10,000 a day for you, this revelation seems to be very real. Regardless of the parameter information, which is very consistent with Nintendo's usual restraint, the mere fact that "Ridge Racing" is the first game will evoke memories for many old players. The reason why this game was a huge success at the time, and even became a legend in the racing game genre, is that it brought a refreshing experience in terms of both interaction and audio-visual effects, and more importantly, this series has always been a "first escort game".
Ridge Racer was not originally a console game, but an arcade game developed by Namco on its Namco System 22 baseboard. 1993 was the era when 3D games began to emerge, and 3D technology developed rapidly with the improvement of software and hardware. 3D arcade games such as Sega's "VR Warrior" and "VR Racing" make players look forward to the future of games. At that time, many 3D games wanted to run before they learned to walk, and they always wanted to get closer to the "realism", which led to a much higher barrier to entry. Namco, on the other hand, chose to sacrifice realism in "Ridge Racing", using "unreal" to bring a stronger visual impact, while also making the operation feel more "gamified". This design made Ridge Racer quickly gain critical acclaim from players.
When 3D games began to enter the home console market, "Ridge Racing" was launched as the first escort game for Sony PlayStation, which was used to show the 3D graphics performance of PS across the era. At the time, the performance gap between home consoles and arcade consoles was like a chasm, so the PS1 version of Ridge Racer had a significantly reduced resolution compared to the arcade version, with only 30 frames per second, and there was also a difference in content. The most painful thing is that because the original PS1 controller did not have a joystick, it could only be operated with the D-pad, which made the operation of this game far from the steering wheel of the arcade. Even so, this work still restores the refreshing racing experience as much as possible, which is really "very next-generation feeling" for home console players at the time.
With this pleasant cooperation experience, although Sony later had the "Gran Turismo" series, it still chose to let the new "Ridge Racer 5" escort the launch of the PS2 console. Thanks to the PS2's performance improvement, the graphics of "Ridge Racer 5" have also made a qualitative leap. And because the carrier of PS2 has been upgraded from CD to DVD, the amount of content of the game has been further expanded after the capacity has been increased several times, so that this work has received a lot of praise.
Now, let's turn back a few years. As a third-party game manufacturer, Namco didn't hang itself from a tree. In addition to its own arcade platform and Sony's PS platform, Ridge Racer is also actively cooperating with other platforms and is not tied to PS. Prior to the release of Ridge Racer 5 on PS2, Namco released Ridge Racer 64 on Nintendo's N64 console, and later released Ridge Racer Evolution on NGC and XBOX, but it didn't make it the first escort for these platforms.
Time came to 2004, this time "Ridge Racing" finally had the opportunity to cooperate with Nintendo in advance, and developed the first escort game "Ridge Racing DS" for a generation of god machine NDS. But "Ridge Racer DS" is actually just a ported version of "Ridge Racer 64", and there is not much new content, and the quality of the original work is average, so the reputation of this work is not very good. What's more, just 5 days after the release of this game, another "Ridge Racing" came with a PSP with far more performance than its era.
Yes, that's right, the Ridge Racer series not only escorted the launch of the NDS in Japan, but also the launch of the PSP in Japan. But whether it is the content, the picture, or the feeling of operation, the two are almost not in the same dimension. The PSP version of Ridge Racer was excellently optimized, bringing a PS2-level image quality on this small screen, which was a huge shock to gamers at the time. In contrast, the NDS lags far behind the graphics of the PSP, and there is naturally no advantage in this kind of racing game that emphasizes the graphics effect. And PSP's "Ridge Racing" is not only a classic, but also the pinnacle of the series. Starting from this work, although the follow-up new works also have many highlights, but in the ups and downs, this series is not as good as the generation at the beginning.
After the PSP, Ridge Racer still hasn't lost its tradition of being a "starter escort game". "Ridge Racer 6" escorted XBOX360, "Ridge Racer 7" is the escort game for PS3, and "Ridge Racer 3D" is the first escort for 3DS. The last time the series was used as the first escort work for a game console was in 2011 for PSV, but the quality of this work was extremely poor, and many players saw it as a scam game. Looking back on the "Ridge Racing" series, it has escorted PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP, PSV, X360, NDS, and 3DS since it entered the 3D era from home consoles, and it is indeed a veritable "eternal first escort".
However, as the quality of the "Ridge Racing" series of games is not as good as year by year, various platform providers are no longer looking for Namco to produce new works as the first escort. After the big failure of the PSV version, the series of home console works came to an end in 2012. This was followed by a mobile game in '13 and '16, but the performance was still unsatisfactory and was sealed in the dust.
In 2019, Bandai Namco's job posting indicated that NS's exclusive Ridge Racer 8 was in development, but nothing was released after that. And the recent revelations have dug it out again, and said that it will become the first escort game of NS2. As the game series with the most releases on new consoles, the revelation that "Ridge Racer 8" will escort NS2 also seems completely reasonable. Also, while Nintendo won't focus on performance improvements, it won't completely abandon its selling point. With real game graphics, it is enough to show players the performance of NS2, needless to say. And "Ridge Racing", a racing game with realistic graphics, is indeed very suitable for showing high image quality.
Of course, the main purpose of this article is to introduce you to the legend of the "Ridge Racing" series, as for whether there are new works in this series, and whether it will really escort NS2, I will not continue to go deeper here. But today, when racing games are almost monopolized by several head IPs, it would be interesting if the veteran of "Ridge Racing" could be resurrected again.