Original Release: Namco, 1995, PlayStation
The first original Ridge Racer game for consoles, Revolution didn’t do much to evolve and completely copied some tracks from previous games (along with recycling Ridge Racer 2’s soundtrack)
Ridge Racer Revolution (PS1, Namco, 1995)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Ridge Racer is one of those series that went off the rails with its sequel naming right away. They did put out a Ridge Racer 2 in the arcades, but that was really just a tweaked version of the original game with a few added features. It just went bananas from there, if I’ve got it right the next game was “Rave Racer” in the arcades in summer of 1995, followed in a few months by Ridge Racer Revolution. So I guess this is the fourth game in the series, though actually the second for the PS1 as a port of the original arcade game had come out a few months prior as a launch title.
Whew! So anyway, Revolution kinda sucks. This was still in the period in which Namco was just iterating on the original game, which was always more of a graphical spectacle (by mid-90s “first wave of polygons” standards) than a quality or even “solid” racer. Same story here, it’s very colorful and really still looks pretty nice for a first-year PS1 release, but the gameplay remains plagued with herky-jerky movement, giant car hitboxes and the maddeningly random “drift” mechanic that is somehow even more annoying than in the first game.
It’s also very much still in an “arcade” mentality, with only three tracks available for the entirety of the game, and only four cars until you kill all 40 enemies on the little Galaga loading screen when the game starts (and then you get most of the rest of them). Same structure to the races as the first game – you start at the very back of the pack, the first five guys teleport ahead such that it’ll usually take to the final lap to catch up to them, the last five guys just sit neatly in their assigned position in life and try to put their ass in your way.
It’s annoying getting around the other cars as hitboxes are blocky and slightly larger than each of the vehicles, also there’s no going off-track at all (even into seemingly benign grass patches) or it counts as a collision and slows you down. But the worst offender is the random drift mechanic. In theory, it’s supposed to kick in when you tap the brake or ease off the gas then re-apply. In practice it just kinda kicks in whenever it feels like it, which probably won’t be on the corners you need it but will be on some straightaway where you let off the gas a little to try to weave around a fat-assed car. And surprisingly the cockpit view somehow gives you much more precision in this one, usually the opposite in racing games, the “chase car” view here seems to just expand all the hitboxes even more.
The only thing that held up is the colorful and detailed tracks with their fun background animations, otherwise the game is just primitive and even stuff like Driver and the first Gran Turismo make it look like a joke. Add in the taunting commentator with the annoying voice and it gets old fast. No real reason to go back to any of this crop of the early Ridge Racer games really.
Links
Videos