Ridge Racer (PS1) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
1,863A playthrough of Namco's 1995 racing game for the Sony PlayStation, Ridge Racer.
I played through all eight races in the game (the three standard races, the extra reverse races, and the two time trial races). I end the video with an extra race to show off the black car that I won.
You probably also noticed that the music playing is not the music from Ridge Racer. Well, as you may or may not know, Ridge Racer loads itself totally into the system memory when the PlayStation starts, so anytime after the Galaxian intro ends (if you get a perfect on this minigame, you unlock several Namco-branded cars), you can take the game out of the system, put in an audio CD, and listen to whatever music you want. I made a mix of Sega arcade music (most of it coming from Daytona, of course!) and put that in since I've always much preferred the cheese rock of Daytona over the more electronic Ridge Racer style music.
This was a game that was released on launch day for the PS1 back in 1995, and oh man did it make a statement. Nobody cared that the game was in arcades two years before - it still looked amazing and there was very little out there that compared to it. Daytona was about it.
My guess is that this is the game that really sold the PS1 at the beginning. The mind-blowing graphics and simple, fun drifting made it an instant hit. Namco also managed to pull off a much better port than (the super rushed) Daytona USA port that Sega shoved out on the Saturn a couple months earlier to beat Sony to the punch.
It almost makes me laugh to think how much Nintendo probably realized that they screwed themselves at this point. They publically embarrassed the ever-living hell out of Sony with their handling of the SNES CD add-on (which, coincidentally enough, was named the Nintendo PlayStation), and then they snubbed Namco hard after Namco really helped build the Nintendo brand with their hardcore support of the NES. So this really seemed like the perfect storm for success - after all, what better motivator is there than revenge?
Hopefully Nintendo has learned their lesson, since they are still paying for their arrogance twenty years later. Had they not been complete douche-bags, the PlayStation brand would belong to Nintendo now. Poetic justice, much?
On a side-note, ever notice how many games around the mid-90s completely aped this formula? Off the top of my head, Screamer on the PC and Burning Road, also on the PS1 come to mind.
Especially Screamer. Many of the tracks have spots that look identical to those in Ridge Racer! It also looked significantly better than Ridge Racer, but then, you'd expect that from a game that required a $2500 PC in 1995 compared to a $300 game system. I've linked those games in the video if you're at all interested. Hope you enjoy the game!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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