The Ridge Racer Legacy, part 15...

Women had been a part of the Ridge Racer universe since its inception in 1993. In a previous blog I had mentioned that the Wangan Midnight manga series from the '80s had influenced the development of Ridge Racer. Wangan translated to Bayshore, the site of the longest, straightest road in the Japanese toll road expressway system. Bayshore was also a location featured prominently in Tekken as the site of the G Corporation headquarters. Akio Asakura and his Devil Z car from Wangan Midnight inspired the Devil 13 in Ridge Racer. The lead female in the series and rival driver, Reina Akikawa, was actually a model and TV personality. She had a hidden passion for street racing and drove a souped-up Nissan Skyline GT-R despite the objections of her manager. She was sociable and had lots of acquaintances but real boyfriend. She was an unattainable idol to her fans. Undoubtedly she was the basis for Rena Hayami in R: Racing Evolution as well as the other women that would be associated with the Ridge Racer series.

Reina dressed moderately and was never show with any overtly sexual overtones. The women in the Namco games, especially Soul Calibur were not as conservative. Before R: Racing Evolution Namco had actually tried to create a racing personality that players could associate with the Ridge Racer series. In Ridge Racer V that person was named Ai Fukami. The model and "race queen" looked closest in concept to Reina. Ai could be seen in the opening cinema of Ridge Racer V walking down the middle of the Harbor Line 765 raceway flirting with danger as two race cars flew by her at top speed. Ai was a dead ringer for Reina. Both had long legs, sported boots and even the same haircut. The only difference was that one was always a two-dimensional character and the other was a CGI model. Well, also that Ai had a tiny mole on her chin. The "imperfection" gave her tremendous personality, not unlike the beauty mark on model Cindy Crawford.

Ai appeared on promotional material for Ridge Racer V as well as on the box cover itself. Namco wanted to make their racing series even more appealing to their male demographic by playing up the sex appeal of fast cars and hot women. Other games by Namco already had memorable female characters but Ridge Racer was a rare hit that did not feature any human leads. There were no drivers to play as or avatars to identity with. With the introduction of the Playstation 2 and the realization that their audience was becoming older and more mature Namco decided to begin marketing their sport titles with virtual idols. Ai was the one that would welcome fans into Ridge City. There was something sexy about her presentation without going into the realm of pandering like Gina Cavalli. Ai was designed to be featured on other projects if audiences responded favorably to her.

Namco had actually been working on multiple sports titles before the release of Ridge Racer V. The publisher wanted to have a character that they could use to advertise all of the other sports games so they developed a additional virtual idol to cover those titles. Hitomi Yoshino would be the proxy featured in the Moto GP motorcycle racing games, World Court tennis games and World Stadium baseball games. Her costume consisted of a bright top and short dress with the logo of a particular sport. She might carry a baseball bat or tennis racket depending on the promotion that Namco was running with her. Hitomi had even appeared in some promotional videos for the E3 and Tokyo Game show advertising the Ridge Racer series when Ai was absent.

The creation and use of virtual idols was almost exclusively a Namco trademark. No other studio, especially perennial rival Sega had ever considering developing characters for the sole purpose of advertising. The stars of most games were usually enough to win over audiences but what if there were no human characters in the title? Racing games had always advertised themselves with graphics of fast cars on the arcade cabinets as well as on the console box art. Namco tried a different approach. They developed a team of idols to make their arcade and console games stand out. It was not a cheap decision by any stretch of the imagination. Even when companies like Namco were doing well financially there were still questions on budget and turnaround. Spending extra time developing a CGI model and creating a cinema for a character that was not even in the game seemed superfluous. Yet the studio committed to having a model become the representative for the series.

Long time gamers could tell you that neither Ai, Hitomi or even Rena would ever become synonymous with the Ridge Racer series. There was a short-haired model that won the hearts of fans years earlier. Reiko Nagase (the first virtual idol inspired by Reina Akikawa) had been a part of the series since the very first game. She was even given top billing in the opening cinema of Ridge Racer Type 4. Reiko had been associated with the arcade games before Namco lost the original Ridge Racer team. She was also associated with the early Playstation console releases. Namco wanted to develop a new idol once they made the transition to the Playstation 2. It turned out to be a mistake. The muse of the series had always been Reiko, the studio didn't realize it them.

When she returned to the series in 2004, a year after R: Raving Evolution had failed to capture the hearts (and wallets) of gamers the studio went back to what worked. There was no mistake that Reiko was posed on the hood of her sports car like the Kamata Angel 0 icon in the Ridge Racers (for the Playstation PSP) opening cinema. She did seem to have an etherial quality about her. That version of the game would actually become a meme when Sony President and CEO Kaz Hirai over-enthusiastically delivered the line it's Riiiidge Racer to a crowd of not-impressed attendees at the Sony E3 press conference.

Reiko did not appear fully developed from the mind of the art team. She had to change and evolve with the times just as the series did. There was a learning curve with the Namco designers as to her character development. They had to figure out how to best incorporate her into the games and give her a memorable personality. The next blog will look at the origins of the character. I hope to see you back for that. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Ridge Racer Legacy, part 14...

The first issue that long-time Ridge Racer fans had with R: Racing Evolution (RRE) was how Namco had tried to distance themselves from their arcade legacy. The studio went for a sim experience regarding the physics and control of the cars. They also licensed actual cars instead of using the timeless racers that they had spent a decade refining. Namco had done a great job capturing the handling of different classes of cars and creating virtual tracks to race them on. Yet they were going after the market that Gran Turismo had cultivated.

Sony's Polyphony Studio had spent years making each generation of the game superior to the previous in every aspect. The obsession to detail was well known to fans of Polyphony. The producers were known for fitting microphones inside and outside of cars as they raced them over different terrain just to they could capture authentic sounds. They would travel the world and meet with car designers and even the people that sewed the upholstery for the seats just to gain an ounce of knowledge that they could reflect in the game. Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec had been released in 2001, a few years before R: Racing Evolution had come out, yet it had more than four times the number of race cars. Polyphony had set the bar and the best Namco could do was try to meet it because they would never be able to exceed it.

The title of the game also did not sit favorably with audiences. It featured Rena Hayami, an EMT driver for Ridge City. She represented the hometown of Ridge Racer but Namco could not bring themselves to call the game Ridge Racer 6. It was as if they lacked faith in their concept. Where the game really began to fall apart was in the treatment of the main characters in Racing Life mode. In the previous blogs I applauded Namco for having the courage to make a female the main character and the insight for the villain to be a corporation. Yet I should have known better. As the game progressed it became more and more obvious why the designers at Namco had selected a female lead and female rival for the game.

It would be hard to defend some of the cinemas featured in the game. I mean what purpose would it serve to have a (non-nude) shot of Rena taking a shower after a race? If the star of the game were a male chances are this scene wouldn't have made the cut. I understand that sex sells and if this were a movie about a female race car driver then the director would have done the same thing. But this was a game after all and scenes like this did nothing to advance the plot. When I was younger these scenes didn't mean as much. As I got older and wiser (and got married) I suddenly had a daughter that I had to be accountable for. It was then that I began taking another look at the way women had been presented in the game. I could show my daughter how cool it was that Rena went from driving an ambulance and getting a job offer as a professional race car driver. She was a role-model at that point. Yet a few races into the game the next time we see her she is naked. How am I supposed to justify the decision to do that in a racing game?

Things were bad before the shower scene actually. The very first time players were introduced to rival Gina Cavalli the camera was fixated on her cleavage. Every scene featuring the character was framed to make sure that her boobs were in the shot. Both Gina and Rena actually wore their racing suit zipped down to reveal their bust line. Every other driver and mechanic was zipped up of course. Rena had a modest black bra for everyone to see while I think Gina was pretty much nude under her suit. I should have been celebrating the decision by Namco to introduce a Spanish female main character into canon. Different ethnic groups and nationalities were and continued to be sorely underrepresented in games after all. While I could tell my daughter that Namco once made a racing game where the two main characters were females I would be ashamed to show her how they were represented.

There were other great games that were hampered by what audiences perceived. For example Marc Ecko's Getting Up was a great narrative on graffiti culture as well as corporate and political corruption. Yet before I could show people the actual graffiti portions of the game I had to spend the majority of the time sneaking up on cops and smashing paint cans on the back of their heads. A blow like that would more likely kill a person than knock them out. How was I supposed to convince viewers of the merits of the game if all they saw was violence instead of art? A similar dilemma had happened with RRE. The racing portions were well done but the only thing that would stick out to viewers (no pun intended) would be the boobs.

It wasn't the first time that Namco, or other Japanese studios for that matter, had been fixated on breasts. For example the Dead or Alive fighting game series by Tecmo was notorious for its "jiggling" breast physics and the original Killer Instinct by Rare featured the character Orchid that would flash her breasts at opponents and give them a heart attack. Pandering to the masses had become the rule rather than the exception in other Namco titles. In the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 they featured rapper Snoop Dog and his own level, The scantily clad women dancing at his side would have been typical in one of his music videos, where Namco really went for exploitation was in offering 150 different bikinis that players could earn for their fighters.

The shorts and loin cloths they put on the male character were tame compared to the strings that made up some of the female costumes. Sex sold in the short run but only substance could sustain a franchise. Many of the female sword fighters in Namco's Soul Calibur series had become more and more busty as the games progressed. The outfits of many of the characters became tighter and more revealing, making Gina seem modest by comparison. The outrageous bust sizes gave the mostly male fan base a reason to overlook the lack of gameplay innovation through the series. Namco was guilty of following the trends of their contemporaries rather than relying on the strength of their developers.

The studio could not manage to win over audiences with RRE despite the number of innovative ideas they had brought console racers. It was a combination of things that cost the publisher from having a hit on their hands. Competing against Gran Turismo was a major problem, but not capitalizing on the Ridge Racer name and trying to inject sex into an otherwise well laid-out plot had doomed the game from the onset. Namco had actually planned to feature Rena and Gina in several other titles if RRE had become a hit. They would continue to use the characters to sell future versions of Ridge Racer, with Gina being the cover star in the Nintendo DS release of the game. Yet any further developments with the characters and teams would be highly unlikely.

The studio did at least develop a new character inspired by Rena a year after RRE was released. Fans of Tekken 5 noticed that Asuka Kazama had a lot of similarities to Rena. The physical and costume traits were obvious but personality wise they were complete opposites. Asuka was presented as a very immature and ditzy schoolgirl. She ended up playing the fool for the rich schoolgirl Emilie "Lili" De Rochefort. It was a shame that Namco could not find a similar use for Asuka. Her brother Jin was a main character in the series and ran the Mishima Zaibatsu whereas she had been relegated to sidekick status. In fact the objectification was a little more insulting to female fans because Asuka's breasts were the punchline in two different Tekken endings. By comparison Rena was presented with much more confidence and maturity whether she was behind the wheel of an ambulance or race car.

Women had actually been an important part of the Ridge Racer legacy yet Namco did not really know how to present them within the context of the races themselves. The next blog will look at the muses behind the Ridge Racer series. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Ridge Racer Legacy, part 11...

The consoles of the early millennium were amazing powerhouses compared to every previous generation. An increase in media storage capacity, improved graphics, sound and memory meant that the new generation of games could be more immersive than ever before. It was up to developers to entertain their audiences while also providing a suitable challenge. The game players of the '80s and '90s had grown up and expected some more refinement in their titles. They wanted new and unique experiences and did not enjoy playing the same title over and over. In essence they wanted an experience that lasted much longer than the average arcade game. Even the other console hits, like the Mario Bros. and the Legend of Zelda had to adapt with the times.

Ridge Racer V was a solid racing game but if left audiences wanting. Namco rethought their approach and created a game that pulled many elements from Ridge Racer Type 4 as well as other contemporary hits. It took the studio several years to release a new title. In that time millions of dollars and thousands of work hours were spent in development. The end result was R: Racing Evolution. The 2003 sleeper that was released on the Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox and Playstation 2. It was a game that the studio meant to be the spiritual successor to the Ridge Racer series. They began by breaking from tradition. It was the first game in Ridge continuity that featured real world production cars and race cars. It was not however the first Namco racing game to use real world sports cars.

A few years prior, in 2001 to be exact, the studio had released the arcade game Wangan Midnight. It was based on the popular manga series that revolved around a group of street racers. Like the Megalopolis Expressway films from the '80s, Wangan Midnight helped inspire the original Ridge Racer game. It was a series that started in 1990, predating the wildly popular Initial D by 5 years. In it the main character, Akio Asakura, drove a custom Fairlady Z that was dubbed the "Devil Z." The impossibly fast and incredibly hard to control Devil Z undoubtedly planted the seeds for the Devil 13 in Ridge Racer. The cars in the comic and game were based on real tuned cars from Nissan, Porsche, Toyota and Mazda. Namco needed to secure a license from several manufacturers in order to make the game true to the comic. Since the company was working on their proprietary arcade hardware they were able to adapt the game and eventually series of games for the PS2 and PS3 easily. The work with the cars and licenses in Wangan Midnight got the Ridge Racer Project team working on something more ambitious.

R: Racing Evolution featured racing in multiple different classes. Granted in Ridge Racer there were classes as well however some of them, like the Duel class, were fictional. From the muscle cars in the Drag Racing category to the four wheel drive beasts in the Rally class, as well as the GT Production and Prototype classes, everything in R: Racing Evolution was grounded in reality. The cars handled believable, they responded fairly accurately and had the sights, details and sounds to help put the players in the moment. The game ran the spectrum of the biggest racing types, ensuring that fans in the US, Japan, the UK and Europe would find something they could identify with.

The most famous manufacturers were represented along with a handful of lesser known (to the US) auto companies. It was much more of a racing sim experience than audiences had ever expected from Namco. The studio was taking a break from the arcade experience to see if they could capture the fans of titles like Gran Turismo on the Playstation and Project Gotham Racing on the Xbox. Where they really surprised audiences was in the story-based "Racing Life" mode. The game revolved around two female drivers. A seasoned professional named Gina Cavalli and a young rookie named Rena Hayami.

Players took on the role of Rena and were made to see Gina as a not-too-friendly rival. In fact from the very onset the cattiness between the two was played up for the sake of drama. It seemed a little bit much at the beginning of the game, making the characters appear one-dimensional. The whole story would reveal itself one chapter at a time, highlighted by different races and different classes of cars. Every character introduced would become more well rounded by the end of the game. These characters could be fearful, dubious or arrogant depending on the situation. By providing a decent script and a range of emotions for the animators to work with the characters came to life. In this way players would learn to empathize with them and have a greater understanding and appreciation of race culture.

Namco had taken a page out of their Ridge Racer Type 4 playbook. It was only natural that they followed what worked previously. Ridge Racer V could be interpreted as a "do over" like Rage Racer was on the original Playstation and Namco needed to really step up their efforts in the next release. The studio did change some things around. Instead of speaking to the player in second-person and having them choose between four sponsors and four manufacturers the studio focused on the most important storytelling elements. They put audiences on one team that was as fleshed out as those in R4. This team had a back story, a history that would be revealed from the different characters in the game. The team captain, a seasoned veteran named Stephan Garnier would speak to them directly and in some cases have a navigator / crew chief named Eddie talk to them during a race. All the while players got to experience the different classes of racing, different manufacturers and sponsor cars as well. The developers then created an avatar for players to assume the role of to help place themselves in the context of the story. That character was not the Michelin Man, although his cameo was a high point in the Racing Life mode.

Namco had good reason to create a unique protagonist specifically for the game. It seemed as if the most successful titles in Japan and the US revolved around a human character. Even in the most elaborate science fiction, fantasy or historical period just about every AAA blockbuster had a human character for audiences to play as and identify with. It was true in Metal Gear, God of War and Assassins Creed titles. The stars of those games had a very deep back story and a very rich supporting cast. Audiences were expected to enjoy the gaming experience but they were also expected to empathize with the characters and become emotionally invested in the plot.

Namco had planned for R: Racing Evolution to become a blockbuster hit by learning from their contemporaries in other genres. Few racing games have had a story as interesting as the one they had developed. Few racing games ran the gamut of classes and car types with a solid sense of realism. Namco did a good job at marrying the two for a whole new console generation. The publisher wanted Rena, Gina and Stephan to become icons in the world of racing games. They had planned for them to become mascots, as well recognized as the heroes from other genres, yet that did not come to pass. There were a number of missteps that prevented the vision from becoming a reality. The next blog will cover some of the lessons learned from this title. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!