Megalextoria

Advertisement for Rage Racer by Namco for the PlayStation from the June 1997 issue of GamePro.

Source: GamePro – Issue 105 – June 1997

The Ridge Racer game lineage is somewhat long and complicated. Rage Racer was the third game in the series to appear on the PlayStation. However, only the original Ridge Racer was an arcade conversion. Other arcade sequels were not ported to the PlayStation but other unique titles in the series were created instead. Rage Racer is one of these and was released in 1996 in Japan and in 1997 in most of the rest of the world.

Rage Racer is most like Rave Racer in terms of arcade games. It introduced a few significant features to the series that would be used in future iterations. First, it featured cusomizable cars. Second, it added a retries rule. Finally, in introduced a new mascot in Reiko Nagase. Otherwise, it was very similar to previous games in the series. Graphics were updated to be darker and more realistic but otherwise game play was much the same.

For any fan of the Ridge Racer Series, this game would be a must have. However, while reviews were positive they were not spectacular. The main reason reviews weren’t even better was because this game simply didn’t add much to the series. In fact, most games in the series tended to be only minor upgrades to the previous game. They were more like revisions than true sequels. The biggest complaint is probably the lack of tracks. There are only four tracks in Rage Racer and two of those appear in previous games.

As for myself, I tend to prefer games that are either more or less realistic that the Ridge Racer series. Give me Mario Kart and F-Zero or on the other end games like Gran Turismo. The Ridge Racer series is fun but I get bored with them pretty quickly. However, if you are a fan of this series or games like this (e.g. maybe Daytona USA) then you should definitely be playing this one too. Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with it and it is after all really just an improved (even if only slightly) Ridge Racer. If you do want to give it a try, you’ll have to track down an original copy for your PlayStation or try it via emulation. I am not aware of Rage Racer having any more recent releases on other platforms.

The advertisement above comes from the June 1997 issue of GamePro.