One of the best if not the best arcade racers. This was one of the first PS1 games that was recommended to me at a time when I really only knew the console for Crash Bandicoot and Gex. I still come back to it on a pretty regular basis. There's not really any big gimmicks with this game since it's just straight forwards racing but it does that really well with a sick soundtrack to boot.
One of the best game soundtracks ever, and the presentation in general is the definition of style. Feels great to play. The weird visual novel-y career mode is neat too, if a little underdeveloped. Would like a little more variation in the content available. I think that’s about my only problem with it.
After hours. I am a single line across which all other lines unfold, slick, slipping. Going so fast the strands slide through the cracks of the emulator.
2:00 am. My automobile body funnelled into video-tunnels that stretch without end to the rhythm of nu-jazz beats. A drama that plays on repeat for my Pearl Blue Soul.
Someway, somehow, R4 reminds me of a Hong Sang-soo film.
It's a senseless comparison, played-out across mediums and genres but every time I come back to these tracks it persists, blends-in along the city lights and tire marks in my rear-view mirror.
There's a tension in this philosophy of drift, the joyous longing of century's sunset, that makes me pause for thought at the end of every race. The stories are so simple, the game presented with such expert straightforwardness, as to blur the feeling itself in Camarro-yellows.
Still, where I think this iteration of Ridge Racer joins the cinema of the author is in that insistence to make flows coexist - rub emotion and expression against one another in ways most often hidden - and leave the outbursts at the edges of the screen.
The speed of Ridge Racer is the pace of life itself but for all its glamour breathlessness the moments that truly stir are those near-misses, the curves in a length of road where the vehicle goes slightly out of control and you brush past a rival. The little encounters. The seconds where the heart stops. I wish I could've held-on to your hand a horizon longer.
Type 4s and margaritas, that’s all I want for the summer.
2:00 am. My automobile body funnelled into video-tunnels that stretch without end to the rhythm of nu-jazz beats. A drama that plays on repeat for my Pearl Blue Soul.
Someway, somehow, R4 reminds me of a Hong Sang-soo film.
It's a senseless comparison, played-out across mediums and genres but every time I come back to these tracks it persists, blends-in along the city lights and tire marks in my rear-view mirror.
There's a tension in this philosophy of drift, the joyous longing of century's sunset, that makes me pause for thought at the end of every race. The stories are so simple, the game presented with such expert straightforwardness, as to blur the feeling itself in Camarro-yellows.
Still, where I think this iteration of Ridge Racer joins the cinema of the author is in that insistence to make flows coexist - rub emotion and expression against one another in ways most often hidden - and leave the outbursts at the edges of the screen.
The speed of Ridge Racer is the pace of life itself but for all its glamour breathlessness the moments that truly stir are those near-misses, the curves in a length of road where the vehicle goes slightly out of control and you brush past a rival. The little encounters. The seconds where the heart stops. I wish I could've held-on to your hand a horizon longer.
Type 4s and margaritas, that’s all I want for the summer.
What this game lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality. Despite there being only 8 tracks, the tight controls made learning and mastering each of these tracks a blast. Pair the tight gameplay with the impressive PSX visuals and legendary soundtrack, and it's not hard to see why people are still raving about this one to this day.