When Ridge Racer first burst onto the scene in arcades in 1993, it became an immediate hit with gamers, but Namco accomplished that before they brought it to PlayStation, for reasons most gamers don’t remember today. It was their latest salvo in competing for the arcade racing space against Sega, but bucking the trend of making car simulations and formula racing themed games, Namco decided to make their first big polygonal racing game themed around Japan’s burgeoning street racing culture.
That would be followed by six Ridge Racer games that were passed around between the arcades and the PlayStation, but just as the millennium hit, Namco made a surprising detour and drifted towards Sony’s competition.
As announced by Nintendo today, Ridge Racer 64 is now available on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, on the main Nintendo 64 app. This version of the street racer was not developed by Namco themselves, but was the first Nintendo 64 project of Nintendo Software Technology.
NST is a bit of a forgotten gem, but they’re Nintendo’s first US based game studio, formed with the DigiPen Institute of Technology and residing in their Redmond offices. So those gamers who always complained that Nintendo never tried to make a US game studio, have no idea that they always had one since 1998.
NST put work into making the best version of Ridge Racer they could make for Nintendo’s console, taking into account its strengths and limitations. So, because of the limited storage size of Nintendo 64 cartridges compared to optical discs, Ridge Racer 64 really only has three courses, with six variations each to make 18 courses. While it has a decent number of cars, the cars and the game overall does not have the amount of detail of the PlayStation or arcade games.
But NST traded that in for superior gameplay, and it shows that in spades. Ridge Racer 64 runs at a smooth 30 FPS, more consistent and impressive than the first two Ridge Racer games on PlayStation. It also has better controls, and not just because the Nintendo 64 controller has an analog stick by default. NST offers the choice of controls from the first two Ridge Racer games, or the one they made just for Nintendo.
Ridge Racer 64 would be correctly considered as highly underrated, because it released in 2000. That was the same year that the PlayStation 2 launched, and two years after Namco demonstrated their perfection of the original PlayStation’s capabilities with R4: Ridge Racer Type 4.
But taken out of that context, as is the case of many other retro games, we can properly appreciate Ridge Racer 64 for the technical accomplishment, and overall fun arcade racer, that it is today. You can check out the official announcement trailer below.
