what’s the best way to play the first game with analog controls?
rinsed it on the dpad way back
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I have vivd memories of what seems like weeks trying to beat the final course in ridge racer. There is just no room for error.
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probably the high spec bonus disc that comes with ridge rcer type 4?
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easiest thing to do is get a copy of the japanese r4 bonus disc with the 60 FPS mode (it isn’t quite full fat RR1, it lacks the full field race and a few other things from the original, but the doubled framerate is excellent) and assuming you are emulating, set your input device to neGcon - i don’t think it supports any other analog inputs. you’ll want to use the JP version because the main menu on the US version doesn’t support the neGcon! not an issue on the JP version
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i have no idea how well MAME runs the arcade version these days but my trying to set up steering wheels in MAME has never been a good time
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tbh, one of the biggest draws of RR is its music. Still listening to RR7 remix/extended OsT or RR4 tracks over a decade+ later, and over the years started to appreciate more and more of the other games/tracks.
still sticking that track on summer playlists/mp3 discs, as well as this one
as an intro-track of going fast playlist.
Only the hipster hotel Forza Motorsport 3/4 soundtracks do get similar airtime, and these are pretty damn top tier material for driving.
If dear reader hasn’t dove into this treasure trove of RR OSTs, go on ytube or spotify and add all of them, and listen.
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I loved attempting the 360 drift in rr7
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tired: sampling mario/zelda music in rap beats
wired:
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Alright, so I did end up playing a lot of Ridge Racer 3D over the last few weeks, and it’s kind of knocked the wind out of my sails a little bit after V, which I’ll explain.
One of the main things I find ultimately off-putting about the later RR’s approach pacing is that there’s a large amount of races/cups spread through a long, gentle difficulty curve (and no story mode, which the series left behind a while ago). In RR3D, there are little branches, but they are pretty meaningless choices. The races aren’t themed, the challenge is all lateral within any tier they appear, and you never have more than 3 choices:
This shift in approach to the content happened somewhere near the middle of Ridge Racer games as they became value-added console titles, and I get it… you can’t just present five courses spread over 3 cups without manifesting middling press reviews. Of course, what’s missing from that picture is that the courses in classic RR were tightly designed nail-biters where you had to push hard to rank up, because of the difficult driving mechanics. It rewarded a careful understanding of the physics and the game’s quirks (lousy collision detection with everything your car could touch) to win races at all. All of which I find more rewarding than what’s here in RR3D.
The game is pretty, for what it is. The art direction sometimes reminds me of technicolor landscapes from a dentist’s office or local LA restaurants that haven’t hung new art since '96:
Not to go all Digital Foundry here, but I am bothered by a couple of things in regard to the visual presentation. Like most 3DS games, the 3D is novel to me for exactly 30 seconds at a time, and I’m not sure it suits a racing game targeting this low of a resolution, since you’re always focused on the messy heap of pixels in the horizon, which flicker uncontrollably in stereoscopic mode. The game targets 30 fps, which I can live with, but am also disappointed by, considering that both the PS2 and PSP RR games prior to this are locked at 60fps. The real sin however is that there’s* really* bad frame drops below 30 all of the time… like, always when you hit the Nitro boost, or when track geometry + car count overburdens the hardware… or god forbid, both at the same time. My big issue with that isn’t that it’s unpleasant looking, it’s that there is a big accumulation motion-blur effect that accompanies the Nitro boost, and when the framerate drops on the already kinda ghost-prone 3DS LCD screen, I literally can’t see where the fuck I’m going! While the car is teetering on the brink of control! Why did they do that!? Smashing that last nitro in the last leg of the race, in the late game, always happens near the busiest final moments of the course, and it’s too easy to spin out or smash into an opponent because of a lack of clear temporal information. Some stages are worse than others in this regard, though.
I already mentioned earlier that RR games starting with the PSP one became more about Nitro management than careful racing path–there is a lighter emphasis on cornering cleanly and efficiently to win, and a greater emphasis on milking every section of the track with drifting, which increases your nitro meter, which is the only way to gain ground as the game ramps into its true difficulty. I would really rather these games just give you a finite amount of Nitro boosts. Drifting is fun, but I quickly began to miss playing RRV right before where sometimes the optimal decisions was to just like to like, actually slow down and thread the needle, not just drift through a chicane as the invisible magnet pulls you perfectly through it!
I do like the drafting mechanic, and the handy meter that lets you know how much slipstream you have.
I was thinking about what else feels “off”. In a generalized sense, the courses are too wide, too long, and too unwilling to put you in really bad positions. This makes the game more accessible, which is nice, but also sands down the personality in a way that bores me long before I’ve halfway exhausted the game content. I’m not sure I’m gonna finish!
If you’ll now bear with me, here’s a couple of borrowed screenshots. This Grand Canyon-looking stage is some serious Sega vibes and has a section where you plow through water that’s really cool:
And this silly Snowman really sticks out sorely in a way I admire, considering the muted tones of mid-period RR games:
Oh and lastly, the audio!
Weirdly, there are two announcers–someone doing an impression of the original RR announcer, but only announces laps and the beginning/ending of races, and a feminine voice that comments on everything you do moment to moment. Check it out, they never stop talking! Why are there two announcers? I don’t know!
The game has a similar soundtrack setup to the PSP games, where tracks are divided up among little EP’s or “discs”. So there’s new stuff, classic tracks, and remixes. It’s all “fine”, and there’s a fair amount, but either I didn’t find any hooks in the new stuff or tiny 3DS speakers are a poor medium for this game. I think it’s honestly a bit of the former and the latter!
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I played RR Vita for like 10 minutes and also found it really bad. Like, shockingly bad. I know I’m late to the party but I’m amazed by how bad it feels to play.
Loading up Adrenaline instead and running the PSP games is the way to go.
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There are still random people playing ridge racer 6 online in 2024 
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This is out now and it’s on all the videogame consoles not just the Switch 2 in case you haven’t heard. Posting from system 22 heaven rn 
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this is an ancient post but i’m surprised by this
in my estimation, ridge racer vita’s main flaws have nothing to do with handling. it’s the focus on nitro but without proper consideration of how that affects time trialing (the only thing left to do in the game), as well as the macro game being effectively non-existent now that the servers are dead (even when they were up, the whole endeavor was pretty sus)
handling-wise RRVita whips ass tho
physics-wise, it’s pretty close to 6 and 7, i believe. possibly actually based on the 7 engine
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RR Vita is great once you pirate i mean buy all the DLC it came with
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I remember getting RR Vita just for the Daytona USA DLC and having a blast but also I had never played a Ridge Racer before so I was doing terribly but at least it sounded great
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It’s still so glorious
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I’m so confused that I never knew this was a thing! Next you’re gonna tell me Sega Rally is there too!
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THAT 360 IN THE TRAILER IS SO SEEEEGAAAAAAA, AAAHHHHHHHHHHH
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