[This is the ninth entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Ridge Racer 2 - Sony PlayStation Portable, 2006

What's Old is New Again

This is a bit of a weird one. Depending on what you expect from a sequel, Ridge Racer 2 can be considered a disappointment: it's all but literally the same game as the 2004 PSP launch title, with the same cars, same music, same gameplay, damn near the same everything, but with more tracks, more music, the addition of an arcade mode, and different endgame cars. It may not be a "proper" sequel, but Ridge Racer 2 builds off of the 2004 original's foundation and cements itself as the definitive collection of the franchise's arcade and PlayStation history.

With all this in mind, it's impossible to talk about the game without mentioning its predecessor. Ridge Racer was the first new game in the series since Ridge Racer V in 2000, the longest gap between entries the series had seen at that point. Instead of being an entirely original game, it acts as a best-of of sorts, featuring a smattering of courses and songs from across the series' appearances in arcades and on the original PlayStation (with 2006's Ridge Racer 2 completing the collection of racetracks). It's easy to get the idea that it's simply cashing in on a console launch with a quick regurgitation of old content (hell, even the new announcer will occasionally throw out lines taken verbatim from the original game), but don't be fooled. It's a greatest hits, sure, but its gameplay tweaks still make it one of the more important games in the series, shaping the way all future Ridge Racers would play.

From 2004 on, Ridge Racer games (Unbounded aside) all generally feature the same physics and driving mechanics, and with how great it feels to control, you can see why they'd stick with it for so long. Steering is as responsive as ever, drifting remains a spectacle while still requiring a deft hand to master, and the rock solid 60FPS framerate makes things feel buttery smooth. Tracks from Rage Racer finally feel challenging for the right reasons here, with some of the most feared s-bends becoming loads of fun to tackle. While the unique Grip driving style is absent, Ridge Racer takes inspiration from the dual styles introduced in R4, splitting the driving further into three different drifting setups: Mild, Standard, and Dynamic. Standard driving has the kind of drifts you would expect from Ridge Racer, while Dynamic essentially injects steroids into them and Mild tones it down to something that more closely resembles a "normal" arcade racer. Dynamic drifts retain more speed across curves but are more difficult to control, while Mild vehicles negotiate turns quite easily but with less speed. The various cars of the game feel more distinct from each other with this system, but it also works in tandem with the new nitrous mechanic to change the way you think about racing on tracks you may know like the back of your hand.

As you drift in the PSP games, you accumulate nitrous, and once one of three canisters on the HUD fills up, you're able to use the R button to unleash a boost of speed. It's a fairly standard mechanic on paper, but a few key caveats make it ever-so-slightly more of a thinking man's game. You earn more nitrous depending on both the angle and the speed of the drift, but can't earn any while it's in use, which leads to a lot of interesting situations. Ideally, you want to time your boosts so that they end right before a big drift, so you can rake in extra nitro with the leftover speed (adding another aspect to learning the layout of a track), and the wider drifts of the Dynamic style will be rewarded more juice than the conservative turns of the Mild configuration. Do you take a Dynamic vehicle into a more winding course to get more nitrous, or do you play it safe with an easier drift style and make do with well-timed speed boosts? All of it turns racing into a more involved, strategic process without taking away from its arcade nature, and gives a new complexion to well-worn locations. Both nitrous and the 3-style system would remain throughout the rest of the series, and while some people think it ruins the purity of the series' arcade gameplay, I find it a brilliant way of fleshing things out while keeping things fast and loose. If you just read a description of the games, it'd be very easy to write off both of the PSP Ridge Racers as inessential, but when you actually pick them up and play them, you realize just how bright of a new light is shed on these old tracks thanks to the new mechanics.

You'll also likely find yourself sticking with Ridge Racer 2 a lot longer than many other games in the series thanks to its high amount of tracks. A total of 21 courses (and just as many reverse versions) are included in Ridge Racer 2, which means plenty of racing. While a vast majority of the game's courses are old (everything from Ridge Racer, Revolution, Rave Racer, Rage Racer, and R4 is here), there are two exceptions. In addition to bringing over the two previously-exclusive courses from Rave Racer, they also introduce two new versions of them. The Silvercreek Dam racetrack is a less difficult take on the Mountain course that incorporates the tunnel you normally drive through if you fall off the first corner's cliff (which is now barricaded off in the original course), but the new version of the City course is a different beast altogether. Downtown Rave City is almost unrecognizable from its source material and may as well be a completely new track. Covered in urban eye candy and featuring an exhilarating stretch of swerving corners, it's one of the best tracks in the series.

There isn't an ambitious, story-based Grand Prix mode like R4, but the World Tour mode packages the game's races in a portable-friendly fashion and features one of the best difficulty curves in the series. Instead of starting with races that you have to really work towards winning, World Tour eases you in with races in slow cars against laughable AI and builds from there. Slowly but surely, cars get faster, AI gets tougher, and trickier courses are introduced, and once the credits roll, you'll unlock some of the hardest races in the series. The post-game "MAX Tours" are so insane that the first of them is only expected by the developers to be beaten by 1 in 200 players, and the final tour is expected to be beaten by only 1 in 200,000. It's a completely made-up statistic, but I've been playing the hell out of these games and I can't even beat the first race of the starting tour. Whether you're just looking for an excuse to careen through some classic tracks for a few minutes at a time or want to push yourself to the limit, you'll find it here.

Like many a Ridge Racer before it, the original PSP game was an early example of what the hardware it ran on could do, but the focus on a high framerate and the sub-480p resolution can really stick out these days. Thankfully, the PPSSPP emulator cleans it up wonderfully without the need for particularly powerful hardware. The textures definitely show their age (they certainly weren't meant to be seen blown up on a bigger screen) and the art direction may lead to the occasional unfavorable comparison to a classic track's source material (Seaside Route 765 isn't quite as colorful as its original incarnation), but it's impressive to see how well it holds up after almost 15 years.

The PSP soundtracks run the gamut, featuring new tracks, remixes, and past classics, with Ridge Racer 2 throwing in extra remixes and legacy tracks for good measure. It also marks the first time in series history where the various Ridge Racer sound teams meet: all Ridge Racer composers, whether from the SamplingMasters era or the console era, come together here to make a soundtrack that has the best of both worlds. The twelve all-new tracks are great, calling back to vibes from across the series. The smooth drum n' bass of Night Stream feels like it came right from R4 recording sessions, and the jazzy Light Groove resurrects the tropical flavor last heard in Rave Racer. It's appropriate that the soundtrack treads some familiar territory, but there's still a few tracks that try some new sounds out, like Disco Ball, which throws in, you guessed it, disco samples. Pulse Phaze from Ridge Racer V composer Yuu Miyake is a particularly interesting one: it brings some real nice funk to the fold, but it also doubles as the inspiration for his later work in the Katamari series.

The new songs are excellent, but the star of the show is the stellar set of 12 remixes, including tracks like Rareheroes (which throws its classic melody into overdrive) and the dynamic remix of Drive U 2 Dancing. Some of my favorite tracks in the series manage to become even better here (although DU2D only appears with vocals on the soundtrack album and in Ridge Racer 3D), with the cream of the crop being the new treatments of Rave Racer's music. It's pretty obvious that the composers have as much of a fondness for the multicultural approach of Rave Racer's music as I do, because they go the extra mile for these remixes. The new version of Kamikaze simply kicks your ass while introducing hints of classical Asian instrumentation, and Heart of Hearts is rearranged with new vocal samples that further the Jamaican dancehall sound. Finally, there's the incredible remix of Blue Topaz that doubles down on the original's pacific atmosphere and throws in a new intro sequence that's just mesmerizing. Overall, it may not be quite as experimental as Rave Racer's music or as cohesive as R4's, but the soundtrack definitely joins them as one of the best in the series.

Reusing old content is an unfortunate running theme for Ridge Racer, but the PSP games make it work better than any game in the series. You'd think a racing game made up almost entirely of recycled tracks would be a slog, but the nitro mechanic is such a game-changer that it all feels fresh, and one of the best selections of music the series has goes a long way, too. There's plenty of good reasons to go back to the original games, but if you just want to race, it's hard to beat Ridge Racer 2, one of the series' best examples of both quantity and quality.

[Key Tracks: Night Stream, Light Groove, Pulse Phaze]

[Key Remixes: Blue Topaz Remix, Drive U 2 Dancing Remix, Kamikaze Remix]

[This is the eighth entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 - Sony PlayStation, 1998

RIDGE RACER TYPE 4, creating a nu wave in the racing scene. Powering beyond RIDGE and RAGE RACER, high-speed control and advanced dynamics accelerate the rush of a first class victory. The culmination of performance and style provide the ultimate advantage in the race for entertainment.

These words accompany the Japanese box art for R4, and despite reminding one of the ostentatious intro text from the previous game, it's a perfect mission statement: R4 is one of the most beloved games in the series because of the very focus on performance and style they mention. Breaking free from the sea of prior entries that used existing content to excess, R4 is in fact a nu wave, feeling fresh in every sense of the word. It kicks all of the old Ridge Racer content to the curb and replaces it with eight original racetracks (double the amount of any prior games), hundreds of cars to drive, and a slick new aesthetic whose charm is irresistible. Even if the actual racing often resembles so many other games in the franchise, it's undeniable that R4 stands above the rest as one of the most charismatic games of its time.

Style

R4 feels different from the instant you start it up: as the decidedly-cinematic FMV intro begins with Reiko Nagase hanging out in her bedroom, you're treated to a kitschy dance tune with vocals that wouldn't feel out of place in Sonic R and character names ("There's characters?") flash on-screen like they're actors at the start of a movie. Like Rage Racer, the game takes itself extremely seriously, but R4 takes on a completely different complexion thanks to a shift from the lame "we're Rage Racers and just the scent of an exhaust pipe is enough to get us hard, motherfucker" aesthetic to a sleeker, jazzy style. Everything, whether it's the cutscenes, the menus, or even the cars themselves, is just dripping with a kind of swagger that almost feels like a precursor to some of what you see in games like Persona 4. The PlayStation's dithering, twitchy textures, and 240p resolution certainly shows its age these days, but try as it might, that can't quite kill R4's vibe: a brand of cool that feels as effortlessly-accomplished as the series' drifting.

Arriving relatively late in the PlayStation's life, R4 was a visual showpiece at the time, standing alongside the realism-driven Gran Turismo as one of the nicest looking racing games you could find outside of an arcade or PC. It continues Rage Racer's quest for realism, but doesn't feel quite as drab as that game did, injecting the more realistic look with a much-welcome dose of color. It isn't much to look at from a fidelity standpoint now that we have games like Forza Horizon 4 hopping over the uncanny valley, but the art direction shines through regardless. The car models in particular are excellent: in addition to being gouraud-shaded for the first time, they also have some of the most ambitious designs in the series, whether it's in the paint or the actual machines themselves. As you play through the game, you unlock some really crazy vehicles, ranging from three-wheelers and F1 cars to hovercrafts and rocket cars. They're divvied up not only by manufacturer (The Japan-based Terrazi Corporation's designs are among some of the more outlandish, while the Italian Assoluto is clearly inspired by Ferrari and Lamborghini...), but also by a racing team of the player's choice, each of which supplies their cars with distinct and colorful livery paintjobs. The Pac Racing Club color scheme of red and yellow is my favorite, but each of the game's four teams give their cars memorable designs (and they translate to more photorealistic games damn well, too). Later games would look and run better on a technical level, but R4 finds a happy medium of classic arcade vibrancy and hardware-pushing realism that still stands out today. It cleaning up well in an emulator helps out too, of course.

Bringing this newfound focus on style together is the soundtrack, which may be the best in the series. The duo of Hiroshi Okubo and Tetsukazu Nakanishi (Namco composers who picked up the pieces after SamplingMasters left Namco during the development of Rage Racer) are joined by three more composers: Kōta Takahashi, Asuka Sakai (who would go on to be known for her work on the Katamari series), and Koji Nakagawa. Instead of trying to emulate the sound of the older games, these five find their footing in a post-SamplingMasters world and create one of the smoothest soundscapes to ever grace a video game. Influenced by neo soul, acid jazz, UK garage, and countless other genres, the sounds here are almost too suave to be suitable for racing, but through one way or another, the instrumentation keeps things moving. Rage Racer's ripping guitars show up here for a few tracks, but even then the soundtrack manages to flow like silk, with songs like Revlimit Funk and The Ride being accompanied by graceful synths and piano keys. The best track in the game (and perhaps the series as a whole), Takahashi's Move Me, is the perfect union of these contrasts: equal parts intense and serene, it basks in synth glory all while a hectic drum 'n' bass sample and infectious guitar riffs go to town. It's some of the best racing music I've ever heard.

The soundtrack is astounding, but its implementation goes the extra mile and makes it even more memorable. You can still pick your song before each race, but every course also has a default track associated with it, enhancing the vibe of both the music and the racing itself. The one that sticks with me most is the pairing of Lucid Rhythms and the seaport roadways of the Out of Blue racetrack. It reinforces the early morning coastal atmosphere of the race while making Lucid Rhythms come across as the god damn best water level music ever. Of course, there's also the grand finale in Shooting Hoops, where a climactic reprisal of the game's main theme plays while you finish out the Grand Prix just as the year crosses over to the new millennium, but other people have covered that better than I could. All of the music is great stuff in a vacuum, but as a part of R4, it's really something special.

Performance

This would all be for naught if the game still played like Rage Racer, but thankfully, the driving is far less demanding in R4. Drifts don't impact your speed nearly as much, and you're even given a choice to bypass drifting altogether. Two separate driving configurations replace the tire customization system seen in Rage Racer, giving two distinct playstyles to choose from. The Drift style seen in Assoluto and Lizard vehicles feels like classic arcade Ridge Racer (although closer to the skidding of Rave Racer than the "gliding" of the original arcade release), while the Grip style of Terrazi and Âge cars changes things up a bit. Instead of drifting, you gain the ability to take sharp corners as you let off the gas, something seen in the arcade spin-off Pocket Racer. It's easier in execution than drifting, but it isn't necessarily an easy mode. In addition to shifting the focus from executing drifts to hitting the apex of each corner, Grip cars typically don't turn as well outside of drifts as most Drift cars do, cutting down on the room for error a little bit. You're inevitably going to prefer one to the other, but the Drift/Grip split gives some fresh life to the gameplay.

The Grand Prix from Rage Racer returns here, but any similarities start and end at the name of the mode. No longer are you repeatedly racing on the same four tracks to earn money to buy new cars or upgrade old ones. Instead, you pick a racing team and a car manufacturer and compete in Real Racing Roots '99: a three-round tournament spanning eight all-new races taking place in Yokohama, Fukuoka, New York City, and Los Angeles. The track design in R4 is among some of the best in the series, with diverse courses that vary in difficulty and atmosphere, even when they're are variants of one another. The class of vehicle driven still improves after each round (and again for the final race), but this time, your performance determines your reward, with better rankings leading to better cars. After each round, a new car is provided by your racing team, and with four classes, four manufacturers, and four racing teams, this leads to a hell of a lot of cars to unlock. The game boasts a daunting 321 automobiles, but this is a bit of a misnomer. In reality, there are 40 unique Grand Prix cars, 4 boss cars earned through a 1-on-1 Extra Trial, and a Pac-Man car that unlocks as a reward for 100% completion. The remaining 276 cars are all variants determined by class and/or racing team, but a roster of 45 is still the largest in the series, and unlocking them keeps you around for quite some time.

The initial racing team decision chiefly serves as a kind of difficulty select (one team may not be as willing to reward a first-place finish as another, and some teams spec their cars with speed in mind over handling), but the real draw to them is in the stories that play out around them as you progress. Each racing team has a story arc that follows their respective managers as they work out various conflicts: Racing Team Solvalou's perfectionist owner Enki Gilbert is haunted by a fatal accident that happened decades ago, Sophie Chevalier is looking to prove she can run Racing Club Micro Mouse Mappy after the previous owner (her grandfather) becomes ill, Dig Racing Team's Robert Chrisman is frustrated by the organization's aloof upper management, and Shinji Yakazi of the debuting Pac Racing Club tries to keep a low profile because of his troubling past. A story is the last thing I would've expected to want from Ridge Racer, but watching the characters deal with their struggles by finding inspiration in your driving is surprisingly endearing, and there's just enough narrative here to intrigue without getting in the way of the actual racing.

I don't have the numbers on me, but from what I've seen, R4 is the fan favorite by far (well, I kind of have numbers), and it's pretty easy to see why. Ridge Racer Type 4 is one of the most cohesive experiences in the series, with a fusion of style and substance that's unforgettable. It's not without its issues (the game can't escape the series-long battle with repetition, even if the stories and unlocks do a good job of keeping it at bay for a while), and I think later games introduce some vital mechanics, but R4 nails everything it sets out to do, and you really can't argue with that.

[Key Tracks: Move Me, Motor Species, Lucid Rhythms]

[This is the seventh entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Rave Racer - Arcade, 1995

Arcade, Come Home

The arcade exclusive is a class of game that becomes more depressing as time goes on. As both arcades and the machines within them continue to die out and decay, the lifelines of countless games get shorter and shorter. While many arcade experiences end up receiving ports to home consoles or even given a second chance thanks to an interested third party company (God bless you, HAMSTER Corporation), far too many games are rendered victims to defunct or uncaring parent companies, idiosyncratic hardware that proves difficult to translate to the home, or other unfortunate circumstances. It's not unlikely that many peoples' potential favorite games could be sitting in some warehouse or dump somewhere, left to be undiscovered by would-be evangelists. You may think I'm being hyperbolic, but some of the most interesting games to ever grace arcades never left them:

• Midway's The Grid married the burgeoning arena shooter genre with the Running Man sensibilities of Smash TV, and while you can see the influence of many different games in it, it's also quite ahead of its time. Playable characters have unique abilities similar to the hero shooters of today, and it may be one of the earliest competitive shooters to have a persistent upgrade/leveling system. Unfortunately, the unique architecture of the Midway Zeus 2 hardware it ran on meant that the game never saw a port.
• Capcom's Strider is regarded as a classic, but director Kouichi Yotsui's spiritual successor Osman often goes unnoticed. Described by Yotsui himself as a parody of sorts, Osman is deliberately outlandish and sports an incomprehensible storyline, but more importantly has wonderful melee-based gameplay and a striking Persian cyberpunk aesthetic. It's right up there with the source material, but its commercial failure doomed it to obscurity.
• Namco's The Outfoxies is the grandfather of Super Smash Bros., featuring arena fighting action that is shockingly similar to Nintendo's hit series (appropriate, considering Namco would go on to work on Smash games themselves). It has huge, dynamic levels full of hazards and weapons, and a spy movie theme that's equal parts slick and absurd. It's a kickass game in its own right, but never received a port. How didn't a Namco suit see what a potential multiplayer classic this could've become on the PlayStation?
• Released at a time where Konami just couldn't stop dropping incredible games left and right, Mystic Warriors was lost in the shuffle. Taking place in a futuristic New York City by way of the Samurai, Mystic Warriors is one of the best run-and-guns of the 90s. There's great visuals and gameplay, and even a surprisingly decent narrative that easily has the greatest voice acting in a video game of its time (which isn't saying a lot, but still). It's hard to see why this was never included in a compilation somewhere. Oh, and did I mention that it's essentially a sequel to Sunset Riders?
• Look at Survival Arts. Just look at it. Jesus Christ, look at this damn thing.

These games deserve better than to just waste away in a scrap heap somewhere, and while there are companies out there like Digital Eclipse and M2 keeping some of these games alive, many still fall through the cracks, and that's where efforts like the Video Game History Foundation and homebrew emulators come in. The only way the vast majority of people can actually play most of these games is through programs like MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), a project focused on preserving the overwhelming library of thousands of arcade games. It isn't perfect (and a perpetual work-in-progress), but it's the best we have for far too many games.

This brings us to Rave Racer.

Rave Review

Rave Racer marks the end of Ridge Racer's time as an arcade-focused franchise, and it's hard to picture a higher note for it to go out on. As the first honest-to-god sequel in the Ridge Racer series, it feels much more confident in its aesthetic (the influence of the series' iconic music bleeding into both its visuals and the game's name), and is even a touch experimental, being host to mechanics and concepts that the series would take over a decade to revisit, if at all. Throw in two new racetracks and both versions of the original Ridge Racer course, and you have what is easily the best arcade game in the series.

Driving in Rave Racer feels a lot like the prior arcade games, but some important distinctions are made here. Handling is a little more realistic in and out of drifts (although some issues pop up in emulation, but more on that later), and sharp turns feel more like an actual car skidding than the bizarrely smooth, on-rails nature displayed in the prior two games. It's still Ridge Racer at the end of the day, but it's more reminiscent of, you know, driving a car. What isn't realistic is the "trampling" mechanic exclusive to this game: if you manage to land on a rival vehicle after taking a jump, you get a sizable speed boost. It's impractical, but it really helps out if you can pull it off, and if you're really good you can exploit a glitch and straight up break the game with it. Drafting makes its debut here as well (arcade fliers for Ridge Racer 2 make note of it being present in that game, but I honestly couldn't tell), and even though it's much easier to pull off compared to the trample, the boost in speed is negligible. In fact, it seems to be more of an acceleration boost than anything. Regardless, driving feels excellent and these additions encourage you to approach races more aggressively compared to many other games in the series (at least until Ridge Racer 7 introduces a more substantial form of drafting with its slipstream mechanic), making it stand out from its brethren.

Two new circuits, simply titled "City" and "Mountain," join the original Ridge Racer tracks, and they're among some of my favorites in the series. Both tracks give their respective themes room to breathe compared to the original RR tracks, which felt more like a video game-y tour of loosely-connected visual showpieces. City takes you on a lengthy highway trip through a metropolis and its adjacent industrial zone, peppering in big jumps and some quick corners along the way. Mountain, on the other hand, uses a rural mountain range to put on a veritable technical driving clinic. You'll be clearing multiple bends with a single drift, using split-second drifts to clear tight chicanes, and lining up jumps to avoid crashing into the sidewall just before the finish line. It's one of the trickiest course designs this side of Rage Racer, but the car physics make it an appealing challenge. These tracks would find their way into the PSP Ridge Racer almost a decade later, but Mountain ends up having a lot of its intricacies stripped away in the process. The starting line is moved from a bespoke tunnel to on the track itself, which would normally be frivolous, but results in a secret boost start going missing in the PSP iteration. More importantly, the track's defining hazard, a cliff that you can actually fall down, landing in a tunnel detour that eventually rejoins the main track (the only instance of this in the entire series), is removed on the PSP, meaning the full version of the Mountain circuit remains exclusive to Rave Racer.

Visually, the game is one of the most impressive of its era, second to only SEGA's games on their flagship Model 2 hardware. Textures have improved significantly in the time since Ridge Racer, giving way to cars with actual game logos plastered on them (instead of just having plain text that says "BARADUKE" or "XEVIOUS" on a car's exterior) and animated signs and billboards that pop out at the player. The City course in particular is a visual treat, with oodles of flashing neon signs giving a perfect home for the energetic soundtrack. It's so nice looking that you begin to understand why there was never a port as you play it: consoles just couldn't have handled it at the time.

All four members of the SamplingMasters unit return for Rave Racer, and you can just tell that they didn't want to appear complacent and supply the expected bevy of electronic music for this game. Don't get me wrong, the soundtrack lives up to the name Rave Racer (Wrong Love, Kamikaze, the intoxicating pep of Euphoria...), but this is one of the most diverse collections of songs across all of Ridge Racer, employing a wide array of genres and styles while maintaining its penchant for danceable racing beats. Every SamplingMasters member uses this game as an opportunity to spread their wings: MEGA and AYA provide maybe the most "safe" set of tracks, but the former throws in Yororeri Hey, a chipper tune that plays around with a yodeling sample for most of its runtime, while the latter's Heart of Hearts exudes a dancehall flavor (including a vocal sample that seemingly talks about passing a blunt). J99 only has two tracks (and one of them is a post-race tune that only shows up in-game for a few seconds) but he channels SEGA AM2 racers like OutRun with Blue Topaz, a rare venture into a more South American sound, that still throws in plenty of samples. sanodg, however, has a god damn field day here. There's the flowery drum 'n' bass majesty of EXH* Notes (stick with this one for the incredible breakdown), the self-explanatory Jazz Mission, the most divergent Rare Hero entry yet in the house-influenced Pole Position tribute Rare Hero 3 (Pacific Mix), and Teknopera, which does exactly what you think it would. I can't decide if Rave Racer's soundtrack is my favorite in the series, but its sheer variety keeps a lot of its tracks fresh in my mind. If you had to pick just a single Ridge Racer soundtrack to listen to from this list, make it this one. It's wild.

Now, the unfortunate reality is that most of us aren't going to be able to play the game the way it's intended, which leaves two options for emulating. MAME supports Rave Racer (along with the Ridge Racer 1 & 2), but has trouble running it at the locked 60FPS of the genuine article, and the audio will skip over itself constantly, which isn't exactly ideal. On the other hand, the viva nonno emulator is capable of running the game at full speed without sound issues, but was last updated in 2003 (on January 1st, even) and is a nightmare to get going properly. Crashes are common, and the game seems to only want to run at a steady 60FPS in fullscreen, which in turn only supports a 640x480 resolution, and even then it doesn't quite work the way it should. Worse still, both emulators run into control issues: using an analog stick requires a light touch since the game doesn't seem to know how to react to the "steering wheel" being able to go back and forth in an instant, so your car can sometimes dart laterally into a wall at a moment's notice. There's always the possibility that improvements to MAME or even a brand new emulator will iron out these issues (and sure enough, the latest update to MAME touts improvements to System 22 games including Rave Racer), but these problems remain a disheartening cloud that hovers over the entire experience.

Games like Rave Racer are exactly why preservation should be taken seriously. Before you even consider its place as a part of video game history, it's simply arcade Ridge Racer at its finest, and that should absolutely be available for those who want to experience it. It's great that emulators are here to pick up Namco's slack, but it shouldn't have to be this way: Namco is more than capable of giving their games the proper treatment, so they shouldn't be neglected like this.

Especially when they're this good.

[Key Tracks: Euphoria, EXH* Notes, Rare Hero 3 (Pacific Mix)]

[This is the sixth entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Ridge Racer Revolution - Sony PlayStation, 1995

Remixed

It's funny to think about it, but even after over a decade of iteration, Ridge Racer Revolution holds up. I've been through the game's cour- alright, look. Ridge Racer Revolution is so much like the PlayStation port of Ridge Racer that I could mirror almost everything I have to say about that game here. Revolution has exactly what I love about its predecessors, but with an extra edge due to the inclusion of a new, more technical course, features from Ridge Racer 2 (the rear view mirror, link-up multiplayer, better soundtrack, etc.), and a few extra trinkets here and there.

Your preference of Ridge Racer or Revolution is likely going to have a lot to do with which game's course you like more, and while Seaside Route 765 is a classic, Revolution's course has more to it. Each of the difficulties transforms the course, giving you three different routes to master (six if we're counting the reverse versions). The visual flavor of the course is very much the same as what's seen in Ridge Racer (beaches, mountainsides, and skyscrapers abound), but there's a little more detail. Roadsides are more populated with palm trees and buildings, and stilt houses line the beach while blimps and airplanes join the helicopter that normally flies by. More importantly, your skills are tested to a greater degree in Revolution's course, with even the starting track featuring some devious sections (there's a hairpin turn right after a jump that's a real pain to navigate with faster vehicles). Seaside Route 765 is more suitable for a quick casual race, but Revolution's races feel like they're made for those who mastered that track.

In addition to the new course, some subtle gameplay tweaks also give the game a more compelling difficulty curve. Revolution feels a great deal faster than Ridge Racer, as speed limits are no longer tied to course difficulty. You can mix and match vehicle classes (think Mario Kart's 50/100/150ccs) and have higher-speed races on earlier tracks, which can be especially helpful when it comes time to race the boss cars, which feel like less of a secret bonus and more of a legitimate endgame this time around. Revolution introduces two more cars to beat and unlock: the miniature "kid" version of the 13th Racing Devil Car and debuting White Angel that adorns the box art. The White Angel in particular is a real bastard, but it's much more feasible to beat these bosses thanks to the addition of the rear-view mirror, which lets you block cars as they attempt to pass, buying you precious seconds to dart ahead before they catch up again. With speeds of up to 200 miles an hour and a fleshed out boss mechanic, there's a bit more to do here after the credits roll than there is in the original, which helps shake the feeling that you're playing a glorified arcade port.

There's some interesting stuff around the edges of the game, too. The introductory loading screen's been upgraded from Galaxian to the Galactic Dancing minigame from Galaga '88, and while clearing out the enemies will still unlock a gang of cars, there's a few other secrets attached to it, too. A perfect score without wasting a shot (or just using a cheat laser that kills everything) will unlock "Pretty Racer" mode, where everybody's car is shrunken down to resemble a buggy (or perhaps more appropriately, the cars in Rally-X), and a pacifist run will unlock time-of-day settings, something normally unlocked after completing the game. The most fascinating secret, however, is the Spinning Point mode that scores your drift rotations across various checkpoints. Doing sick 360s across turns is a Ridge Racer tradition, but you never really had a reason to beyond screwing around or showing off, and this mode is the closest the series ever gets to focusing entirely on the drifting instead of standard racing. It isn't quite Need for Speed Underground, but it's a fun little diversion nonetheless.

Finally, there's the soundtrack. The SamplingMasters are at full force here, with Takayuki "J99" Aihara joining the ranks of AYA, MEGA, and sanodg to give us one of the greatest soundtracks in the series. The soundscapes of Grip and the synth overdose of Drive U 2 Dancing are Ridge Racer electronica at its most infectious, and J99's contribution, Maximum Zone, fits right in. As if a set of original tracks wasn't enough, all but one of Ridge Racer's tracks are present in the form of remixes (a remixed "Ridge Racer" is missing, but was present in Ridge Racer 2 as the post-race victory theme). The best remix of the group is probably Rare Hero 2, which breaks from the usual samples to sneak in an homage to the main theme from New Rally-X, but pretty much every track here is good stuff. I guess it's a positive sign that it was harder than normal to pick three favorites for this game.

If you look back at magazines from around its release date, you would see many complaints from people calling Ridge Racer Revolution more of the same, and that says a lot coming from a time where many publications would happily recommend whatever garbage came their way (I don't even think the people that like the Simpsons: Road Rage would give it a 92, Nintendo Power). Frankly, considering that the most notable change the game makes is to its locale, "Revolution" is about as laughable of a subtitle as it could have. That being said, this is 2019: you're not going to be paying Chips & Bits or FuncoLand 50 bucks to play the game these days, so it's easier now to see Ridge Racer Revolution as an improvement even if it's arguable just how big that improvement may be. I might be picking up my PSP for Ridge Racer (be it the original or the 2004 game), but once I'm warmed up, a round of Revolution is sure to follow.

[Key Tracks: Grip, Drive U 2 Dancing, Maximum Zone]

[Key Remixes: Rare Hero 2, Rhythm Shift Remix, Speedster Overheat]

[This is the fifth entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Ridge Racer - Arcade/Sony PlayStation/Sony PlayStation 2/Mobile/Zeebo, 1993

The Arcade Comes Home

It's funny to think about it, but even after over a decade of iteration, the original Ridge Racer holds up. I've been through the game's course, Seaside Route 765 (and its expert-mode variant, Ridge City Highway), more times and in more games than I can count, but I still find myself coming back to its original incarnation more often than I should. There's no question that later entries would have more to offer, sport sharper graphics, and mostly play better, but there's just something to the original's arcade sensibilities that helps it retain its appeal as a quick fix of adrenaline. Maybe Kaz Hirai was onto something and those jerks in the audience should've been hooting and hollering and jumping out of their seats when he revealed that the experience was coming to their portable console, since it's a perfect pick-up-and-play game.

Some of this lasting appeal is owed to the game's presentation. Later games in the series keep the ridiculous "drive sideways" approach to gameplay and the endearing re-imagining of various Namco franchises and characters as in-game racing brands, but few have that unmistakeably-90s arcade racing vibe of saturated colors and cheesy commentary encouraging you to do your best. There's an energy and enthusiasm that the game has for itself and its players that's not only charming, but makes everything about it a little more exciting. Hell, something as mundane as setting things up in the menu manages to get me pumped to play the game, thanks to the echoing pep talk from knockoff Fred Schneider. In an age of backwards-baseball-hat-ass attitude and Dan Cortese trying his hardest to make the lamest shit seem x-treme, it's refreshing to see something so... genuine. And even with visuals that nobody would ever mistake for something resembling real life, I can't help but gawk at passing helicopters or roadside ads for other Namco games.

By series standards, the game's soundtrack is pretty spartan, but the 6 tracks composed by the SamplingMasters holy trinity of AYA, MEGA, and sanodg do a great job regardless. Outside of the game's title track (which ironically sounds like standard video game fare as far as instrumentation goes), the music establishes the series' EDM identity with a roster of consistent, driving techno beats. High points include the sample-driven intensity of Speedster and the first of sanodg's Rare Hero tracks, where he takes an earworm of a melody and a handful of samples ("let it hit 'em") and transforms them across five different Ridge Racer games, but there isn't a bad track in the bunch. Even the batshit gibberish of Rotterdam Nation begins to grow on you after a while.

The driving is rock solid, but varies depending on which version you play. The arcade version benefits greatly from having analog controls, and everything handles like butter. If anything, it almost feels a little too smooth. There's isn't really any "give" as you steer back and forth, giving the impression that you're rotating the entire vehicle at once instead of adjusting the angle of the wheels. The PlayStation version feels more natural, and while the lack of analog control is felt (at least, for those of us without a NeGcon), it's compensated for with a choice in vehicle, with each car having different handling, traction, acceleration, and max speeds. The arcade version feels better overall, but there's more depth to the PlayStation port thanks to the "new" cars.

Now, what really hooks me in with Ridge Racer is its difficulty. Where games like Rage Racer and R4 have room for error, letting players progress with just a podium finish, this game wants you to win your god damn race. Like a lot of arcade racers, there's a huge focus on getting that perfect run (especially considering the savage AI and the speed hit you take with any collisions), which means you become intimately familiar with both your vehicle and the racetrack. As you work your way through the game's four races (and four reverse races on PlayStation), you start to pick up on what turns to drift through, when to start those drifts, and which cars can take certain turns without drifting at all. The arc of going from bumping into walls as you try to turn corners to whipping out reverse 360-degree drifts around the track's sharpest corner as the announcer calls you a genius is one of the more gratifying things in the series, and even though the game eventually goes overboard in its endgame Time Trial showdown with the fabled 13th Racing "Devil Car" (where a lack of a rear view mirror often kills your chances of staying ahead), making it to that point is still a damn good time.

Ridge City Port Authority

Now here's the hard part: there are no less than seven different versions of Ridge Racer to take account of, so which one takes the honors? There's the original arcade release, its Ridge Racer 2 revision, the original PlayStation port, the enhanced "Turbo Mode" remaster that came with R4, the PS2 port that came with the Japan-only namCollection anthology, a version for mid-2000s mobile phones, and even a port to the Zeebo. The mobile and Zeebo versions are pretty clearly not contenders, but let's take a look at the others.

The arcade versions run at a locked 60 frames per second and in an impressive (for 1993) 640x480 resolution, but lack any unlockables or the ability to race the course in reverse. Ridge Racer 2 has a rear view mirror for blocking opponents behind you, multiplayer link-up functionality, and a superior soundtrack with 11 songs (all of which are absent in the PlayStation versions). It also lets you pick from eight cars in the service menu, but without unique statistics or even a third-person view, it's a little pointless.

The PlayStation port runs at half the resolution and framerate of the arcade versions, but has a slew of vehicles with unique characteristics, an optional third-person camera, reverse variations of each course, and a boss car to race and unlock. This is also the version you saw Kaz playing on his PSP.

The 2005 namCollection version is based on the PlayStation port and ostensibly has analog stick support, but it's an import-only title that doesn't run in emulators, so I couldn't tell you myself. What I can tell you is that it features a rearranged soundtrack that attempts to recreate the samples used, and it makes the whole thing sound like a street corner bootleg. Just take a quick listen to Speedster: it's like they got the "OH NO" sample from Mr. Bill or something.

While experimenting in an attempt to get R4 to run at 60 frames per second on PlayStation hardware, the team at Namco managed to get the original running at 480i and 60 frames per second, and released this as a bonus disc alongside R4 under the name Ridge Racer Turbo Mode. Unfortunately, the day-to-night cycle and traditional 13 car races are absent in this version, leaving you with up to only 2 other vehicles to race against. This isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but the soundtrack is: with the rest of the disc dedicated to FMV trailers and demos for other Namco games, there's only room for two songs during gameplay: Ridge Racer and Grip from Ridge Racer 2/Revolution. At least the Angel Car from Revolution makes an appearance as a boss.

This leaves us with no real definitive version 25 years after the fact. Personally, the features of the PlayStation ports win me over, but the barren soundtrack and races of Turbo Mode lead me to the 1994 original despite its weaker performance. You really can't go wrong with any of these versions, though.

In spite of decades of innovation and improvements, there's still something to be said about OG Ridge Racer. There's no shortage of better racing games (or even better Ridge Racers), but with the unbridled pep of its aesthetic and the allure of a well-earned first place finish, I can't resist busting the PSP out every once in a while.

[Key Tracks: Rare Hero, Feeling Over, Speedster]

[This is the fourth entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Ridge Racer 6 - Xbox 360, 2005

Explorers

Ridge Racer 6 takes the excellent, nitro-fueled foundation of the PSP's Ridge Racer and blows it out into a full-fledged console game. This means there's 15 new courses (okay, one is from the PSP game), 17 new songs, and a hell of a lot of racing to do. That being said, it's also the game that came closest to not making it onto this list. If you have Ridge Racer 7, there's not a lot of reasons to bother with this game, since 7 does almost everything 6 does, and better. Despite this, I have this nagging feeling that I'd be doing a disservice to its unique progression system if I left it out.

Ridge Racer 6's main mode is the World Xplorer, a sprawling series of 235 races split up into numerous branching paths that you can explore on your own terms. You can do a single race at a time or, in a surprisingly forward-thinking design choice, group races together to complete them in a single sequence, considerably cutting down on time going in and out of menus. Enclosing circles of races on the world map by clearing them will unlock the bonuses (usually new cars) inside, encouraging you to do races in a specific order. As you progress, you'll come across different types of challenges, like 1-on-1 duels with boss cars, classic no-nitro races, and even a weird reverse-charge mode where your nitrous only charges while you're using it, forcing you to take corners as fast as possible to maintain a supply of nitro. The feeling of repetition is inevitable, but World Xplorer does a pretty good job of covering up the fact you're doing 235 races on just 15 courses.

Unlocks are mostly the usual menagerie of vehicles and liveries, but every once in a while, you'll be thrown a real curveball. Late-game rewards include a port of Pac-Man (with a high score further unlocking a duel with Pac-Man himself), the ability to have Heihachi's Japanese voice replace the standard in-game announcer, and the most interesting array of boss vehicles in the series. Just when you think you're tired of playing the game, you'll be thrown into a 1-on-1 battle with a hovercraft, SUV, or whatever the hell this is. These cars (well, machines) return in the next game, but if you want to bask in the glory of a buff old dude screaming at you in Japanese as Pac-Man spins around a corner in a UFO, you'll have to play Ridge Racer 6.

The PSP Ridge Racer marked a sort of return to normalcy for the music of the series, with SamplingMasters (the team of Shinji "MEGATEN" Hosoe, Ayako "AYA" Saso, Nobuyoshi "sanodg" Sano, and Takayuki "J99" Aihara) being reunited after Hosoe and Saso's departures from Namco's Sound Team shortly before the release of Rage Racer. Ridge Racer 6 continues this reunion, and the soundtrack reaps the rewards. These guys are the MVPs of the series, and their tracks here are just one example of why that is. Hosoe's series-long love affair with gabber music continues, with Valley of the Mind taking things down a notch compared to his previous gabber tracks, resulting in an easier listen that's no less addictive. Saso provides the incredible Nitro Mantra, which builds up into an exhilarating mash-up of Middle Eastern and techno sounds. There's highlights elsewhere (including sanodg's trip to synth heaven, Floodlight, and the spacey-yet-hard-hitting vibes of Hiroshi Okubo's Explorers), but the returning AYA and MEGATEN steal the show here.

Ridge Racer 7 damn near makes Ridge Racer 6 obsolete, but the game remains a novelty thanks to its sometimes-bizarre unlocks, gripping soundtrack, and unique single-player mode, which almost serves as a prelude to the carrot-on-a-stick progression design that would become so popular later on in that generation of consoles. I can't pretend that Ridge Racer 7 doesn't kneecap its value, but there's enough here to make it worth at least a quick look.

[Key Tracks: Nitro Mantra, Floodlight, Explorers]

[This is the third entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Ridge Racer 3D - Nintendo 3DS, 2011

Ridge Racer 3D is a bit like Ridge Racer V: it doesn't exactly shake things up. There's more to it than the PS2 launch title, but it's one of the games that earned the series its reputation for excessive rehashes. Obviously, a part of the appeal is seeing the game in stereoscopic 3D (as the intro rap mentions, amusingly enough), and that does lead to some fun little effects like splashed water and confetti getting "stuck" on your screen, but past that is a lot of what's been done before. You have the nitrous system, grand prix, and handling dynamics from the PSP games, the slipstream mechanic and some of the customization from Ridge Racer 7, and a bunch of courses and music from across the series. It's an adequate game, but the amount of recycled content makes it kind of forgettable.

Even some of what's new doesn't really move the needle. The soundtrack is a rare low point for the series, as the titles of the original songs ("My Crazy Chainsaw," "Dr. Mad's Gone," "NOx Warheads") are more memorable than many actual compositions. Part of it may be the quality hit that the music takes to fit on a 1GB 3DS cart, but I mostly stick to the half of the soundtrack that's taken from prior games. There are some highlights in the sample-driven tracks like Call of Aspara and the entrancingly-bouncy Nitro Right Now, and the aforementioned Dr. Mad has a headbanger of a gabber beat that's perfect for Ridge Racer, but far too many of the songs just blur together. Bizarrely enough, the best track is old but still exclusive to this game: one of the songs from the selection of older music, a PSP remix of Ridge Racer Revolution's Drive U 2 Dancing, inexplicably received vocals during its transition to the 3DS, giving it a much richer sound.

Fortunately, the rest of the new additions are consistently great. I was way more excited than anybody should be to see a new car manufacturer share its name with Lucky & Wild, an arcade game too obscure for how damn cool it is, but it also brings a stable of useful vehicles influenced by classic American muscle cars. More substantial are the three brand new courses, which rank among some of the best in the series. The easy favorite is Redstone Thunder Road, which may as well be taken out of a Daytona USA game. It's a lengthy, challenging track full of twists and turns across an American Southwest canyon, which is a welcome change in pace from the urban and tropic landscapes you typically see in the series. Silver Mountain Skyway, on the other hand, takes you up a snow-capped mountain and back down again through a mountainside village. Even the comparatively plain city circuit, Oceanfront Cruise Way, manages to have some visual appeal, ending in a dash through an underwater tunnel. All of the new courses have a distinct color palette that almost feels like they're trying to recapture the arcade vibrancy of the original games, and it makes drifting through the already solid course designs that much more enjoyable.

It's hard to argue against the "been there, done that" feeling that Ridge Racer 3D has, but it's not without its charms. There's plenty of other games in the series I would sooner jump to for a quick fix, but the few new additions make it worth playing every once in a while. After all, the only other place you can play the 3DS-exclusive tracks is as DLC in the Vita game, and I'm certainly not doing that.

[Key Tracks: Nitro Right Now, Call of Aspara, Dr. Mad's Gone]

[This is the second entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Ridge Racer V - Sony PlayStation 2, 2000

Emotion Engines

Ridge Racer V feels like a victim of circumstance. Released on a new generation of hardware only 15 months after its predecessor, I suppose that there was only so much this game could do.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's a fine game. The act of driving feels a lot better than it did in Rage Racer (if a little weightier both in and out of drifts), and it looks and runs great for a PS2 launch title. 60 frames per second really goes a long way, and the aesthetic does an impressive job of bringing everything together. That being said, RRV just feels like it's missing something.

The whole game is set around Ridge City, where a series of racing tournaments are taking place. In-game radio station 76.5 Ridge City FM (call sign RIDGE, of course) serves as an in-game guide of sorts, with DJ Ken Ayugai narrating the action and giving the player a primer on the Grand Prix as the game starts. It's not exactly as cool as the DJ from the Warriors, but making the in-game announcer and soundtrack a part of the in-game world is an appreciated touch.

Speaking of the soundtrack, it's one of the more eclectic in the series, going outside of its comfort zone with its featured artists. The radio station framing gives way to some licensed tracks by Japanese band Boom Boom Satellites, German DJ Mijk Van Dijk, and an original song by Takeshi Ueda of the Mad Capsule Markets (of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 fame) that calls to mind the Gabber frenzy of Ridge Racer 1 and 2's nuttier tracks. Despite this focus on licensed music, however, my favorite music comes from Namco's own. Series cornerstone Nobuyoshi "sanodg" Sano gives the game some night driving perfection with Paris, and his "Rare Hero" series of songs makes a triumphant return (after having last been seen in 1995's Rave Racer) with Rare Hero 2000. I also have to mention Kōta Takahashi, whose tracks include a remix of Ridge Racer 2's Grip and the delightfully campy Daredevil, which exudes the kind of endearing rock-and-roll cheese you would sooner expect from one of SEGA's arcade racers. As a whole, RRV's soundtrack ranks on the lower end for me, but the highs are pretty high.

All of this has the makings of a solid Ridge Racer game, so what's missing? For starters, courses to race on. Ridge Racer V has a grand total of seven racetracks, which may be a higher amount than any of the arcade games have, but it comes with some major caveats. Of these seven tracks, four of them are based on tracks from the original Ridge Racer, and just a quick look at the course layouts can tell you why that'd be a problem. The remaining three tracks are fairly standard highway races and a high-speed oval around an airport. None of these tracks really excite, and the repetitive nature of the Grand Prix mode means that you find yourself in the doldrums pretty quickly.

Ridge Racer V isn't a bad game, but it just can't escape its lack of content. Earlier games would step around this issue by having a focus on perfect runs or copious amounts of unlocks, but Ridge Racer V lacks a significant hook beyond "here's Ridge Racer on a new console." It makes a convincing argument for how far technology had come since the original PlayStation, but ultimately has little to say about the growth of Ridge Racer itself.

[Key Tracks: Daredevil, Paris, Rare Hero 2000]

[This is the first entry in a countdown of the best Ridge Racer games. I recommend you read the introduction before reading this; it includes a brief history of the series and links for each entry.]

Rage Racer - Sony Playstation, 1996

Real Racing Roots

No one knows how the race began or how its drivers became known as Rage Racers.

They live dangerously close to the edge; pushing both their cars and themselves to the limit. They feed on the burning fire of competition; are fueled by the rush of speed; and share an overwhelming desire for victory.

For these elite few, the whole world is their speedway; but there can only be one ultimate...

Rage Racer!

This self-serious text is what you're treated to at the very start of Rage Racer's Grand Prix mode (with an even cornier version gracing the Japanese release), and it perfectly sets the tone. Aesthetically speaking, Rage Racer is very much "the edgy one," something that remains conspicuous even as the series would adopt its more-grounded look moving forward.

The breezy arcade aesthetic of previous Ridge Racers has been traded in for a more realistic and aggressive approach. Skies are a little less blue, ripping guitars now feature prominently in the soundtrack, and the cheesy, enthusiastic announcer is substituted by a sultry voice that says stuff like "let's get it on" before a race and "teach this sucker a lesson" or "take this chump for a ride" as you approach rival cars. It's not necessarily a bad look for a game (contemporaries like Road Rash had a grizzled charm all their own with stuff way harsher than this, after all), and the game looks outstanding when you think about what else was coming out in 1996, but when the gameplay is still as arcadey and over-the-top as ever, it all just feels a little jarring and not enough like Ridge Racer. Imagine if the latest SSX had kept its reviled "Deadly Descents" identity before it released, and you have an (admittedly exaggerated) idea of what Rage Racer is like compared to the rest of the series.

For as much as it can stick out, the aesthetic does have some bright spots. This is the Ridge Racer that introduces the concept of distinct car manufacturers, and with it comes great little details like unique HUD speedometers for each brand of car (a touch that would skip R4 but return for much of the series afterwards). When it's not laying down guitar riffs or beating you over the head with repetitive samples until you're making new nonsense words out of them in your head ("play-doh, mountain of play-doh, mountain of play-doh" and "Aku-Aku" are two I've come up with), the soundtrack employs drum and bass music to great effect. It's a genre all but made for racing cars, and tracks like Silver Stream clearly influenced the smoother, more cohesive soundtrack that R4 would have.

Unfortunately, when it comes to actually playing the game, it pales in comparison to almost every other game in the series. While the basic driving still resembles the classic Ridge Racer formula, you're almost discouraged from drifting in Rage Racer, with lengthy drifts often leading to drops in speed that just take the fun out of everything. While the game introduces the mechanic of speccing vehicles with either a focus on gripping the road or drifting, navigating the course just doesn't feel rewarding no matter what your setup. You end up having to brake during some turns, which just feels like Ridge Racer sacrilege.

It doesn't help that this is one of the hardest games in the franchise. The twists and turns of Rage Racer's courses are orders more difficult than almost any RR game before it, and that's before you unlock faster vehicles in the Grand Prix. Even the lone respite from brutal corners, the high-speed Extreme Oval, proves challenging thanks to highly competitive AI cars. If that wasn't bad enough, most of the later cars in the game, 6 out of the 13 total, only come with manual transmission. This forces you to stick to upgrading older cars and makes unlocking the outlandish endgame vehicles a hollow victory if you aren't into shifting gears yourself. A lot of arcade racing games would reward players for using manual transmission in ways like having slightly higher top speeds, but locking damn near half of a game's vehicles behind it is simply overkill.

All this being said, I almost feel bad putting Rage Racer at the bottom of the list, since it's arguably the most important game in the series when it comes to the growth of Ridge Racer as a whole. So much of Ridge Racer's identity as a console series has roots here: the more comprehensive single-player mode, the distinction between grip and drift, the canon of car manufacturers, the more ambitious vehicle designs, and even Reiko Nagase are all brought into the series pantheon by Rage Racer. It's one of the weakest in the series from a gameplay standpoint, but I at least respect Rage Racer for laying the foundation for what Ridge Racer is after arcades.

[Key Tracks: Silver Stream, Lightning Luge, Hurricane Hub]

For the end of the year, I originally wanted to do another top 10 like I had done for 2017, but this year hasn't really been the gangbang of incredible games that the past few have been, at least for my tastes. Forza Horizon 4 has been an absolute joy and Konami's Pixel Puzzle Collection has eaten up a ton of my time (and I've yet to get to games I'll probably love like Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Hitman 2), but most of my 2018 has been spent digging into older stuff I've neglected in the past. Instead of ranking the year's best, I thought I'd do something a little different and cover a series I did a deep dive on this year, so I'm going to be counting down the best games in the Ridge Racer series and pointing out each soundtrack's best music along the way. Before I get into that, however, I have to set the stage a little bit.

"Wow, what a start!"

Ridge Racer was first released in the arcades in 1993, running on Namco's debuting System 22 hardware. Similar to its arcade rival, Daytona USA, it's a lap-based racing game with then-groundbreaking 3D visuals. RR distinguishes itself from its contemporaries, however, with its electronic soundtrack and signature style of drifting, which sees players whipping around corners in an almost on-rails fashion. The game would later be a PlayStation launch title, where it would gain enhancements like a choice in vehicle, an optional third-person camera, and the ability to race on the course in reverse. It also marks the debut of the series' "boss" cars, super-charged vehicles you can compete with in Time Trial mode, with a victory unlocking them for yourself to drive. And who could forget the loading screen minigame that let you play a wave of Galaxian for a chance at unlocking a new set of cars?

Ridge Racer 2?

Ridge Racer 2 was released in 1994, but it was hardly a sequel at all, and I don't just mean in the way people call games like Splatoon 2 and Super Smash Brothers Ultimate not sequels to be shitty. RR2 is essentially a revision of the original game, sporting a new soundtrack full of both original music and remixes, multiplayer link-up functionality, a rear view mirror function, and a more pronounced day-to-night cycle, further limiting the player's ability to see ahead of them during nighttime. Otherwise, this is pretty much Ridge Racer with a slightly fresher coat of paint. The original game wouldn't see any proper sequels until the following year.

Ridge Racer's first real follow-up was 1995's Rave Racer, the only game to be released using the strange "Rave" naming convention Namco was pushing at the time (Tekken was developed under the name Rave War, a title actually advertised in Ridge Racer itself). It improves the handling and visuals of the previous game and introduces two new tracks, with designs that are much more ambitious than that of Ridge Racer's course, whose tracks are also included here. A planned PC port was cancelled, leaving this one arcade-exclusive to this day, but the PlayStation would be given a separate sequel to Ridge Racer the same year.

You can't help but shake the feeling that the Ridge Racer Revolution is what Ridge Racer 2 was intended to be. Revolution features RR2's improvements and soundtrack (except with the in-game announcer's "RIIIIDGE RAAACER TWOOOOO" hilariously cut off in the menu music), but with a brand new course with three variations (Novice, Intermediate, and Expert difficulties each have a unique version of the course, whereas the original game only changed the course for Expert). The original RR course is in the game, too, but it's bizarrely exclusive to the game's multiplayer mode, which requires use of the PlayStation Link Cable. Besides the new course, Revolution offers additional improvements: the loading screen minigame is now based on Galaga 88's "Galactic Dancing" sequence, and there are some new bosses to race and unlock. Also included are a few hidden modes, including one where you play using chibi versions of the standard cars. This "Pretty Racer" mode served as the basis for 1996's Pocket Racer, which is a somewhat odd and compromised port of Revolution to the arcades (running on Namco's PlayStation-based System 11 hardware). Its cabinet's size clearly communicating the game's target audience of children, Pocket Racer simplifies the Ridge Racer formula so much that there isn't even a brake pedal. Instead of drifting, you're able to take incredibly tight turns in Pocket Racer by simply letting off the gas.

Rhythm Shift

Other than a fairly standard port of Ridge Racer V, Pocket Racer would be the last entry that arcades would see. From here on out, the series would fully eschew its arcade roots, building new Ridge Racer games exclusively for consoles, starting with 1996's Rage Racer. With a more grounded art style (furthered by in-game advertisements for real-life racing tire brand Yokohama) and a Grand Prix mode that allows players to customize and even upgrade vehicles as they progress, Rage Racer is decidedly a console game experience, a trend that would continue throughout the series.

With an initial release in late 1998, R4: Ridge Racer Type 4's additional development time compared to prior entries shows. With 8 tracks and over 300 different vehicles to drive, it was the most substantial Ridge Racer to date. R4's standout feature is its unique take on Rage Racer's Grand Prix, which follows the story of four different racing teams as their driver, the player, competes in the Real Racing Roots '99 tournament. This narrative focus combined with a smooth, cohesive aesthetic resulted in R4 being one of the most memorable entries in the series, being an easy shoo-in for Sony's PlayStation Classic system.

Ready for Launch

By the turn of the 21st century, the Ridge Racer series had made a full transition to becoming a home console standby. After the early 2000 release of Ridge Racer 64, a Western-exclusive Nintendo 64 take on the franchise developed by Nintendo themselves at their US-based Nintendo Software Technology studio, almost every main Ridge Racer game would be released coinciding with the launch of a new piece of gaming hardware.

Ridge Racer V debuted alongside the PlayStation 2 in 2000. While it didn't have much to offer in the way of new features, having a bit of a "back to basics" approach, it served as a solid showpiece for the new machine, being the first console release in the series to run at 60 frames per second (even if it came at the expense of introducing many people to the concept of "jaggies"). 2004 saw the release of two different handheld entries: the Nintendo DS launched with Ridge Racer DS, while the PSP's launch title the simply-named Ridge Racer.

While the DS outing is merely an enhanced port of Ridge Racer 64, Ridge Racer's PSP entry is sort of a greatest-hits. It features tracks and music from across the series' history, including both courses that were once exclusive to Rave Racer (even going as far as to make a new variation of both courses, as if to apologize for neglecting the tracks for so long). While the vast majority of the game's content is from prior entries, it's still notable for introducing the nitrous mechanic, which allows players to charge up a consumable boost of speed while drifting. You're given more nitrous for faster drifts, so there's now a strategic element to consider while driving, since timing boosts that end just before a large drift will lead to large amounts of nitrous. This mechanic would find its way into every Ridge Racer that followed. A follow-up, Ridge Racer 2, released in 2006, featuring all of the prior game's content, but filling in gaps to include every single course in the series' arcade and PSX history.

The seventh generation received two different launch titles, with Ridge Racer 6 and 7 appearing on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, respectively. RR6 introduces online multiplayer and a unique "World Xplorer" career mode, letting you progress through a whopping 235 races across 15 courses in a branching "Ridge Universe," unlocking new vehicles and features along the way. Ridge Racer 7 is almost an enhanced version of 6, adding 7 more tracks, a slipstream mechanic, and a robust customization system, allowing you to fit vehicles with performance-altering parts (although the World Xplorer mode would be replaced with a more traditional Grand Prix).

After a second round of portable launch titles (the 3DS' Ridge Racer 3D and yet another plain old Ridge Racer for the Vita), the series would go into a limbo that we're still in today. There are rumors of a possible Ridge Racer 8 for the Switch, but 2012's Ridge Racer Unbounded spin-off is the last game the series would see outside of a few questionable mobile titles.

The Cuts

Now, Ridge Racer is somewhat infamous for its cannibalizing, so as you might expect, it becomes a series that's complicated to qualitate almost immediately. A lot of the series' entries have distinct atmospheres or unique tracks and vehicles that make them stand out from later games that may recycle some of its content, but there are also iterations that come as close as a "sequel" can to making its predecessor outright obsolete, coming across as a director's cut or a game of the year edition. Some cases are so extreme that it would be pointless to have them on a list like this, so a couple of games will be left out of the rankings. Also absent are any games not developed by Namco like 64 and Unbounded, or spin-offs that don't really fit the Ridge Racer mold such as R: Racing Evolution and the various mobile games. That leaves us with the following games:

• Ridge Racer
• Rave Racer
• Ridge Racer Revolution
• Rage Racer
• R4: Ridge Racer Type 4
• Ridge Racer V
• Ridge Racer 6
• Ridge Racer 7
• Ridge Racer 2 (PSP)
• Ridge Racer 3D

The Vita Ridge Racer technically fits the criteria for this list, being developed by the Namco/Sony joint venture Cellius, but I can sum up why it'd be dead fucking last in one sentence: It's a pitiful skeleton of a game that has three old tracks, five old vehicles (well, one's new), and absolutely nothing of note to offer besides some Daytona USA-themed DLC. I'd rather have at least some semblance of intrigue as to what the bottom of the list is than predictably hand the ranking to a game that's listed on Wikipedia's article on famously bad games, and besides, don't you think a list of ten games just flows better?

But enough preamble. I'll be putting up the first Ridge Ranking shortly, with the rest to follow.

1. Ridge Racer 7
2. Ridge Racer 2 (PSP)
3. R4: Ridge Racer Type 4
4. Rave Racer
5. Ridge Racer Revolution
6. Ridge Racer
7. Ridge Racer 6
8. Ridge Racer 3D
9. Ridge Racer V
10. Rage Racer