One of my current gaming hyperfixations—one that I seem to fall into every couple of years—is arcade-style racing games. Specifically, the Ridge Racer series.
I'll admit, I am a late-comer to the Ridge Racer fandom. I somehow managed to avoid playing one until my early 20s when I downloaded a bunch of racing games onto my Vita during a previous bout of this fixation. The PSP launch title was, I think, the first I played. I didn't really "get" it, mainly because I didn't understand how drifting was supposed to work (I think I picked a "MLD" type drift car, which tbh is a type I still do not enjoy driving at all. More like mid amirite) and was more interested in playing Burnout Legends again at the time. But eventually, I read someone reminiscing about Ridge Racer Type 4 on social media or something and remembered that I had downloaded it with all those others. So I decided to fire it up, and it blew my fucking mind. The Music! The Style! The G A M E F E E L! I cannot imagine what it must've been like in 1998 to play it at release, but unfortunately I was too busy at the time playing the PS1 racing games my parents picked up from the bargain bin.
I've since played much more of the series and have begun to develop some Opinions on it and on arcade racing games as a genre. So I'm gonna keep rambling about it, but I'll at least put it below the jump.
Opinion: There should be Ridge Racer games again.
The last true Ridge Racer game released (i.e. developed by Namco['s sister company] and not just slapping the brand on a different game) was Ridge Racer on Vita in 2011/2012. It was awful and was basically a free to play game that you still had to buy and had some really overengineered social multiplayer stuff. Classic 2010s bullshit. It was so bad that the developer was shut down just days after launching the game in Europe and a few weeks before it even came out in North America!
So Namco sat the entire last console generation out, and then the first chunk of another. At this point, I'm not sure that Namco has it in them to make a new one. But I do think that an R4 remaster (it turns 25 this year!) would be a slam dunk with minimal QOL improvements necessary! It's aged really well!
I'm trying not to get too hopeful about this, but Bandai Namco has been remastering some games I was not expecting them to... Mr. Driller 2 (which is incredible and everyone should play it) and the upcoming We <3 Katamari and Baten Kaitos remasters come to mind! And they've also released both Ridge Racer 2 PSP (which was never available in the US!) and R4 through the top tier Playstation Plus Premium subscription in the past few months, so it's not like they've completely forgotten about it. (But also, please let me buy those separately Sony/Bandai! I can't afford another subscription!!!!! Let me give you some money instead of none money!!!!) I'm just saying that I don't think it's entirely out of the question that we see it again in the next couple of years.
Opinion: There is a mechanical complexity "sweet spot" for Ridge Racer games that I'm not sure exists... yet.
Ridge Racer, the 2004 PSP launch title, introduced a three-tier nitro boost system that has been present in and refined over the subsequent games in the series. Boosts charge as you drift around corners, and fill up faster depending on your speed and technique. Boost doesn't charge while boosting, but it will fill faster if you drift immediately after the boost wears off thanks to the residual extra speed.
Ridge Racer 6 on Xbox 360 took that system and tweaked it so that you could choose to fire off either one, two, or all three levels of boost at once, so long as you have enough filled. 1x boost is the weakest but also lasts the longest, 3x boost is the most powerful but runs out fastest, and 2x is right in between. The boost takes long enough to charge that you have to actually think about when to use it and how much. I think it is a great way to get players to engage with the core mechanics of the game (drift! go faster than the other cars!) and adds a strategic layer of resource management that isn't too fiddly to figure out. If I were going to design a turbo mechanic for an arcade racing game, I think I would just rip that off as directly as I could.
The following Ridge Racer game, Ridge Racer 7 on PS3, introduced another mechanic on top of that—Slipstreaming. When you're driving directly behind an opponent, your car begins to accelerate due to there being less air resistance directly behind another car.
Slipstream mechanics in racing games are my favorite. They make races tighter and more dynamic, have a natural risk/reward mechanic (don't rear-end them!), and hey! It works that way in real life, too!
In the context of Ridge Racer as a series, Slipstreaming's addition has a subtle but profound impact on gameplay. Before Slipstreaming, driving defensively meant that you'd always want opponents directly behind you to prevent them from passing, as rear-ending a car can cause a devastating loss of speed. It is basically the only way you can protect your lead in a lot of the games (and the reason why the first person camera with the rear view mirror is the objectively superior way to play Ridge Racer games). Slipstreaming forces you to throw that mentality out of the window. Now, you don't want anyone on your tail, since they'll probably overtake you. But you also have to keep your racing line in mind! Will weaving to make Slipstreaming difficult put you at risk of grinding into a wall or another opponent? If you let them pass, maybe you can stick on them and Slipstream back ahead... etc. Lots of really fun decisions to make on the fly, and it often leads to some really fun battles where you and an opponent will be almost dancing with each other around the track, swapping positions and hoping the other guy flinches.
Now, back to my main opinion.... I would like to play a Ridge Racer game with the Slipstream mechanic, but no boosts. As far as I can tell from reading about the games I've not yet played, I'm not sure this exists at any point in the franchise. I think there's something to the simplicity of the earlier Ridge Racer games, focusing on pure execution rather than resource management or performance tweaking, that's been lost as the franchise has progressed. Not that I think the later Ridge Racer games are bad—I just think that Slipstreaming is a more elegant way of adding mechanical complexity and strategy to the series, and I wish there was an alternate timeline where Slipstreaming had been added before nitro boosts. There's a nagging feeling in the back of my head that R4 with a Slipstream mechanic might be my ideal arcade racing game. I don't really know what to do about this, other than to either make my own game or hope that someone out there agrees with me and is making it. Maybe that's you? You have my blessing.
Opinion: Ridge Racer Turbo Mode is so cool.
For those unaware, R4 released with a bonus disc containing a 60 FPS remake of the original PS1 launch title Ridge Racer basically to demonstrate how much Namco had learned about the console in the years between that game and R4. And just so you can easily compare, it also had the original 30 FPS version! If that wasn't cool enough, they also included an in-depth developers' statement, which I've linked in the video above. I really recommend reading through it, as there's a level of candor and detail about its making that you don't see often in a shipped video game. Like an early version of the developer's commentary tracks in some Valve and DoubleFine games.