The publisher kept true to canon and made sure that the sights and sounds continued to improve in every release. Even with the limited processing power and storage capacity of the handhelds Namco was still able to deliver some memorable experiences. Ports that had a container ship, a crane and a few warehouses in Ridge Racer Type 4 had become much busier and far more packed with details when it was visited on the Playstation Vita. Of course the Vita was also a much more powerful system than either the Playstation or Playstation 2. It's high definition display was capable of presenting graphics which were light years ahead of where they were in 1999. It had grown out of the lessons learned from those consoles, the Playstation 3 as well as the PSP and PSP Go. The most important lesson that Namco would learn from the title was how quickly the company could anger their fan base. Ridge Racer for the Vita was released in 2012 with three tracks and five cars. Additional cars and tracks were available by purchasing downloadable content packs (DLC). The company had charged full price for a game that was essentially an empty shell. A year later the company released Ridge Racer Unbounded and further distanced themselves from the things that made the original series so much fun. Visually the Vita game was a stunner. The tracks and cars had never looked better and the control was quite good but the lack of content severely hurt the review scores from critics and word of mouth from fans. It was considered one of the worst games of 2012, not for how it controlled or how it looked graphically but for how lacking the content was. Needless to say the Metacritic reviews were not kind.
The game was a slap in the face to those that enjoyed the Ridge Racer 6 and 7 experience from six years prior. Fans were shocked that during those six years did not see a quantum leap in the progression of the handheld games. Before that the portable games were very well done. Ridge Racer Accelerated HD, a 2011 release for the iOS was a decent attempt at making a racing game for the iPhone. Ridge Racer 3D for the Nintendo 3DS came out in 2011 as well. It predicted the use of DLC micro-transactions from Namco. Audiences overlooked that because the game had included plenty of tracks and cars for players to unlock without having to pay for them. The 3D effects on the Nintendo handheld took some getting used to but were well done otherwise. The game was actually picking up on the desert environments that were featured in Ridge Racer 64 from the Nintendo 64 from a decade earlier. At least some of the developers working at Namco still cared about the legacy they had created.
Ridge Racer Slipstream debuted in 2013 for the iOS platform. The developers at Invictus had released a portable version of the franchise that was worth more than the $4.99 they were asking for. Namco was hoping to earn a little bit of revenue from micro-transactions. Audiences could spend anywhere from 99 cents all the way up to $49.99 to purchase credits that they could use to unlock additional tracks and cars. Unlike Ridge Racer Vita however Slipstream allowed players to "grind" through the races and earn the credits to unlock everything. It took a lot of patience and determination to unlock all of the content but the game was actually highly enjoyable and worth the number of replays that it took to get those credits. To keep things interesting the developer would send three daily tasks to complete where they would earn additional experience points or credits. For a mobile game the graphics on Slipstream were well done. It looked just a hair toned down from the Ridge Racer 6 and 7 experience from the pinnacle of the series. The game even included multiple music tracks from the previous games so that not only did it look and play like a classic Ridge Racer game, it also sounded like one.
After reading the interview with Mr. Adjaj it was hard for this arcade veteran to accept that Namco might never return the series back to their roots. The division inside the company had stifled creativity. It was a trend over the past decade that had seen the best talent come and go in Sega, Capcom, Square-Enix and numerous other Japanese studios. The long-term fans would never forget the golden era and would long for a return to a classic arcade experiences. What the studios had failed to realize was that the experience could be captured on the home consoles and even portable systems. When I say arcade experience I did not mean having to pay 25¢ for every play through. That would now be considered a micro-transaction these days. Audiences wanted the robust AAA experience that Namco used to give them on the Playstation consoles. With cars worth racing, a team worth racing for and a resolution that would be etched in their memory. No strings attached, no additional content to download.
Players that had grown up during the most formative years of the arcade racing movement could still rely on Namco, now Bandai Namco, to enjoy the best of both worlds. The over-the-top racing from the arcade but on lightweight portable devices. It was not known when the next full-fledged Ridge Racer would hit the consoles. The Playstation 4 and XboxOne had debuted at the end of 2013 and a new Ridge Racer game had yet to be announced for either system. The success of Ridge Racer Slipstream and the PC title Ridge Racer Driftopia helped keep the title on the public consciousness. Most recently the publisher wised up and began offering audiences in the west something that had been missing for more than a decade. The next blog will highlight the best part of the experience that had nothing to do with racing.
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