Fox's Review: Ridge Racer 64\DS

[Fusion]

Ridge Racer 64... Classic at the very least.  Not the best, though.  Namco could've done better, in my opinion.  Oh well, beats racing White Angel with F/A Racing as your vehicle.

Graphics:
Graphics are fairly decent on the N64, as their blended textures breathe some better-looking life into the Ridge Racer series (to be honest, none of the PSX games looked that great).  Everything seems a tad cartoony, though.  The cars theirselves are somewhat cartoony... Everything looks somewhat cartoony except for the traditional RR tracks, which look as they should, and in some spots the tracks were updated.  Plus there's an original track, that takes place right beside the Ridge Racer track!  It's designed for more of a speed challenge, though...

Sound:
The sound is fairly average, the music MIGHT get you pumped, but it just doesn't feel like Ridge Racer at all.  I wish they'd had included Mathmabeat from Rage Racer, because that would've fit my mood sometimes.  The music isn't in MIDI form like you'd expect, but instead in good quality mono samples, but they do'nt take away from all of the voices and effects present in the game.  A lot of the cars seem to sound quite similar, though...

Gameplay:
Here we go.  It's either classic RR or it's not RR.  I was indeed playing Ridge Racer, but it felt like I wasn't.  I couldn't explain how much frustration I had when I continually watched all the opposing cars get a *Boost Start (see bottom) while the best I could do was a minimal wheel spin start.  Worse off, the leader somehow has a 1 lap head start on everybody else, and if you sit and wait a few seconds, he'll come flying by you.  Collision physics are annoying, too.  You hit an enemy in the rear, you lose about 50 to 200 MPH in total and your opponents are unaffected, sometimes you'll even go flying backwards!  Scrape an enemy on your side, you go flying backwards.  Only time you can hit an opponent and NOT go flying backwards is if they hit you in the bumper.  Quite annoying when some of the A.I drivers just love to get in your racing line.  Only thing that saves this from a really low score is the really helpful-and really unrealistic-drifting.  You can drift through a turn at 120 MPH flawlessly.  The only thing is you'd have to line yourself back up otherwise go flying into a wall.  You'll find yourself hitting those walls a hell of a lot trying to dodge slow drivers.

The game boasts 20+ cars, and 10 tracks (20 if you count the extra backwards races). The tracks come from Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer Revolution, and Rage Racer.  The tracks are replicas of their respective difficulty levels, and as such Rage Racer's expert mode will make you enraged yourself with it's hairpin curves. As for the cars, you've got your 2 classic cars, then, straight out of Ridge Racer Type 4, Pac Racing and RT Solvalou in place of the yellow and blue car.  You've got the Mappy cars, the Galaga cars, the Boscinan cars, and the Xevious cars.  Now the next set of cars is also from Ridge Racer Type 4, starting with the Dig Racing Team, Micro Mouse Mappy, and now this brand new car (apparantly) called 13th Racing Kid.  Then we've got the legendary White Angel! Followed by this weird car named Digipen Racing... Then another out-of-RRT4 Assoluto Infinito, as well as the Age Solo Supernova.  This weird car named Atomic Purple, then Extreme Green, followed by another RRT4 car named Terrazi Terrific, next followed by the Lizard Nightmare (inevitably it looks like the 13th Racing car from the first Ridge Racer), then an american pride vehicle called "Screamin' Eagle" followed by the car you see in the intro, named Ultra 64.  There's more than that, though, we've got 00 Agent (cool as hell car), the ship from Galaga '88, Blinky of Pac-Man fame (the repaint feature lets you repaint him to ALL of the ghosts), Red Shirt Rage (those boys from Star Trek got mad), the canadian Crazy Canuck, a freakin' Caddy Car, and last but not least, Pooka.  POOKA, for crying out loud!  That's not even remotely related to a car!  Oh well, Namco will be Namco.  I'm shocked I didn't see any Klonoa cameos, though...

In short: If you want to buy it, buy it and play it.  I still think the older Ridge Racers (the original and of course Revolution, my favorite) beat the crap out of this one in terms of gameplay.

*Boost start: In F-Zero, the boost start (also called Boost Fire in the GBA games, where this is only present) throws your machine to max speed plus a short time booster fire.  It guarantees you a head start unless other opponents perform the boost start as well.

[Fusion]

Now, for my take on the DS version.

The Graphics and sound are mostly unchanged, except for these:

Graphics:
Reiko Nagase was replaced with a slutty bitch.
Unantialiased, now has the emulated PSX look.  Everything else now looks kinda dull because all the menus were changed around.  Some of the tracks lack their special lighting effects.
The car Digipen Racing was replaced with the Dig Racing Team car painted to have a Princess Peach theme known as Peach Team Racing.
Extreme Green was repainted into DK Team Racing (Yes, Donkey Kong).
Crazy Canuck has been substituted for Luigi Racing.
A Shyguy is one of the unlockable vehicles.
Minor change: A part of the wing of the F\A Racing car is now black instead of the traditional white.
Aside from the interface changes, and the like, nothing has been changed.  Color replacement system is still there.
Ultra 64 was texture-modified.  It looks muchly the same, only with much less detail.  The white stripe is still there, 64 has been replaced with "DS", and the car was renamed "Nintendo DS".

Sound:
Unchanged, only there's no vocalization in the main menu theme aside from "Riiidge Raaacer!" which makes the theme sound a little empty.  There's a little more variation in the vehicle sounds, plus 3 new music tracks (one of them straight from US SMB2!)

Gameplay:
After a second look, nothing has changed about the general gameplay, aside from that cars throw you WAY back more often than you think.

[Jesuszilla]

RIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRR!!!!