Working as Intended

With Final Fantasy XIV being unfortunately disappointing right out of the gate, and the playerbase for said game seeming to consist of very elitist and... well, typical Internet goers., this journal has been unfortunately rather bitter as of late. In an attempt to alleviate that, I thought I'd write another long-arse look into one of my favorite video game series.


I was going to do something special in regards to Dead Rising 2 (Which is awesome, just so you know) buuuut I'm still working my way through that. Maybe later this week!

If you couldn't deduce what series I'm going to talk about today, then.. um, yeah. Ridge Racer is a mysteriously overlooked series, especially considering the large impact it's had on gaming. Sure it's no Mario or Zelda or whatever, but most modern racing series today (as well as major parts of the PlayStation's initial popularity and mainstream-ism) owe themselves to these games. That and Wipeout.

While not the first 3D racing game, the original Ridge Racer for the Arcade/PlayStation was the game that popularized the usage by showing just how insane (at the time) the graphical quality could be. It looks like several pieces of arse stapled to an even larger arse these days, but back then? Oh, gaming magazines simply couldn't shut up about it. Especially when console gaming at the time was just coming off the SNES/Mega Drive.

But I won't blab on about that sort of thing too much, as you can go to pretty much any RR site and read about that. Only thing I will say though are that a lot of racing game developers (most famous being Kazunori Yamauchi, who made Gran Turismo) have said in the past that the Ridge Racer series played quite an influence of their works. Hurray and stuff. What I will talk about, however, is why I love the games so gosh darn much.

Out of all the old school arcade racing games, Ridge Racer is the only one that's being continued to this day that hasn't wildly reinvented itself to 'get with the times'. It's the very last of the old Arcade Racers. While the series could certainly use some upgrading here and there it still plays simply and beautifully. You pick a car, pick a track and go spend the next 3-5 minutes slamming yourself around corners with absolutely no regard for physics. Drifting is the appeal of RR, and even 17 years later it's so much fun to powerslide around a corner at 300+km/h, hearing the tires scream underneath you and laughing as physics and reason bellow angrily in the background. They have no place here.

Much like with the Ace Combat series, Ridge Racer has had its fare share of pretenders to the throne, but none have been able to trump it at what it does best. Drifting like crazy is fun and all (and then some), but to say that's the only thing about RR is to completely miss the major appeal of the series.

What Ridge Racer has in spades, and is something I'm seriously trying to figure out if any other major racing series even has really, is personality. Everything in this series oozes it in one way or another. From the scenic vistas of the Ridge City landscape to the often surprisingly quirky but incredibly fitting background music, everything is done to give the series personality, rather than just licensing vehicles by the truck-load and throwing them around some grey, dull circuits.

Which, of course, is best shown in the opening FMVs.




For a PSX FMV that came out in 1998, the opening to Ridge Racer Type 4 is still pretty goddamn incredible.  I can't think of any non-Final Fantasy (VIII at least) game from that era that has its FMVs hold up this well, but that's beside the point. The point is, given how most racing games at the time (and even to this day) usually just have intros consisting of cars and some inappropriate licensed music, Ridge Racer still remains a sadly special case in both its attention to personality over sheer gear-head circle-jerking and actually having a team of composers working on every game.

Type 4 also probably has the most unexpected racing soundtrack out there. Especially since these were the days when Need for Speed was starting to become increasingly loud and licensing everything, Type 4's soundtrack consisted of... jazz, piano dittys and some light electronica.

Huh.

It worked extremely well, and created probably the most charismatic racing game score composed, but.. yeah, nobody was really expecting any of that when they put the disc into their PSX. People swear up and down over the soundtrack, and copies of it are still being rabidly sought after, so Namco certainly succeeded on this front.

Going back to the above video for a second, it would quite an error to discuss the series and not talk about what is essentially the only time (outside of kart racers) a character has been just as important to the appeal of a racing game series as the cars themselves. If not more so to some people. While there's debate about which game she first debuted in (some swear it was Rage Racer, some Type 4, others Rave) Type 4 was the first major appearance of Reiko Nagase. It's kinda weird writing this, since you don't go to Need for Speed and start talking about its characters, but Reiko, despite having very few actual appearances in the series (opening FMVs and 1-2 cameos in 4/6) has somehow managed to become as important to the series as the cars, or the music.

In fact so much so that Ridge Racer V pissed off a lot of fans for one particular reason.




I have no idea what exactly made Namco decide to replace Reiko, but it sure made a lot of people very confused and/or angry. Reiko had actually featured in a lot of the promotional stuff for the PS2/RRV up until the game's launch, so I imagine that factored into it. Probably didn't help that poor Ai up there was.. really not being the most subtle woman on the planet. Though there's a lot of fan-service shots for Reiko, she acted mostly normal, and I think just having the usual series become 'sexed up' struck a nerve with some people. I can't remember much of RRV, as it was a pretty underwhelming game, so I can't comment much more than that.

But yes, probably the only time a racing game has suffered backlash for replacing a human from the roster.

If I could find the blasted video I'd embed it here (it's very obscure), but the first promotional video for Ridge Racers on the PSP (Or just Ridge Racer in the west. The S was clearly not supposed to be there..) pretty much did nothing but point out that Reiko was returning, and the fanbase did rejoice ever-so much.




Actually, Ridge Racer on the PSP was pretty much entirely created as a loving tribute for the fans who had stuck with the series for so long. Every game up to that point had two tracks remade in the game, and it also introduced the Nitrous system, which is definitely the best mechanic in the series, aside from the drifting. The logic, if anything in these games can say they have logic, behind Nitrous is that you obtain it by drifting, which is pretty standard. However, you gain Nitrous significantly faster if you drift just after using Nitrous, so a major aspect of the game (and is essential to winning later, optional, races) suddenly became timing when to fire your Nitrous and what your racing line would be when you hit the corner. Do you want to quickly skirt through the corner, saving time but giving you less Nitrous? Or do you want to take longer to drift around the corner, but give yourself a much larger supply of Nitrous?

The PSP games kept the mechanic pretty simple, but it was really fleshed out in Ridge Racer 6/7, where you could choose how much Nitrous you wanted to ignite at any given time and, in 7, you could choose what type of Nitrous bar you wanted. It really helped add some thinking and proper timing to the series. Especially when going online/to Time Attack.

This is what the series was best at; simplicity. Getting the essentials into your head as smoothly as possible so you could just drive like a lunatic. While, as said, the later and optional races in the Career Modes got very difficult, most of the series is pretty easy. It's more about being able to relax, enjoy the music/scenery and figure out the perfect racing line then "OMG I HAVE TO WIN RIGHT THE FUCK NOW"

If I want to keep myself wide-eyed awake and constantly yelling at the screen I'll play Burnout or Need for Speed. But if I want to relax before/after a long day, I'll pop in Ridge Racer and the game will just let me do my thing. Which is abuse physics with almost hilarious ease and focus more on self-improvement then any massive form of competition. A lot of RR players share this mindset, which is why Multiplayer matches on the 360/PS3 are hard to come by but Time Attack is still heavily populated.

Ridge Racer Type 4 is probably the most easy-going of the series. There's not much to really wrap your head around, the music is mostly soothing tunes and the storyline (Yes, there's actually a storyline) is more the focus then the races for 3/4 of the teams you can choose from. I blurbed on about Type 4's storyline in one of my previous ramblings, but it's still surprisingly enjoyable to this day.




After Ridge Racer V the series has fallen into a bit of a depressing slump, release-wise. There were four games on the PSX, but since V pretty much the only Ridge Racer games you'll find on a console are the launch titles. Though that's less to do with V and much more to do with the current state of racing games. The games are still as fun as ever, but more and more people are being swayed by the realistic racers, or the more violent ones. There's absolutely nothing wrong with those games, even if they're not my cup of tea, but sadly it means the Arcade Racer is slowly becoming extinct.

If you're a person who doesn't care about relaxation or personality then the RR series probably won't do much for you. As said, most of the racers against the AI are very easy. The game's don't feature any real-life cars, and usually only 20-30 cars, as opposed to the hundreds the realistic racers have with every title. I think the problem is that if you look at it as a side-by-side comparison, RR (and most Arcade Racers) just don't have 'as much to offer' on the whole.

I think that's a load of crap, but that's the way things seem to be going.

Ridge Racer 6 sold very poorly on the 360 due to the Xbox players being completely unfamiliar with the series, as well as being released alongside Project Gotham Racing 3, which was pretty poor timing on Namco's part. Thankfully Ridge Racer 7 for the PS3 sold a crap-ton of copies in Japan and PAL regions. In fact, the PSP game did so well in these places as well that Namco made a sequel specifically for them. Europe, Australia and Japan got Ridge Racer 2, while America got nothin'. It was a surprising (and very nice) move on Namco's part to release it at all outside of Japan, since they had to translate even more stuff and bring everyone back to toil away at it. RR2 also sold a truck-load of copies, so it was certainly worth their time.

But yeah, that's why the Ridge Racer series is very close to my gaming heart. It's certainly not for everyone, but for me? Well, I love it just the way it is.

Except more games being developed wouldn't kill anyone!

I'm probably going to get asked this quite a bit from my RR-loving friends, so I'll just put it down here. What's my favorite track in the series? Honestly, there's so many awesome ones, but I'm going to have to be predictable as all hell and go with Seaside Route 765. Though Phantomile, Over Pass City, Mist Falls, Helter Skelter and Edge of the Earth are all fantastic too.

765 is essentially the Dust/Blood Gulch/Wake Island/Easily Most Popular equivalent in Ridge Racer.

Simple, fast, fun.