Now More Than Ever We Need A Proper New Ridge Racer

There was a time when a new console heralded the release of a new game headed up by Reiko Nagase. You could set your clock to it, especially if the console was released by Sony. Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer V, Ridge Racer 7, Ridge Racer (again), and Ridge Racer (again, again) were launch titles for the first PlayStation, the PS2, the PS3, the PSP, and the PS Vita, respectively. Ridge Racer 6 and Ridge Racer 3D were released alongside the Xbox 360 and 3DS, and Ridge Racer DS was released just two weeks after the original DS in North America. 

For years, Namco’s dedication to getting a Ridge Racer out alongside new hardware was near religious. However, after the frosty reception to 2011’s DLC-laden PS Vita entry and the sales disappointment of the very different, soft reboot, Ridge Racer: Unbounded, Namco and Co. seem to have lost almost all interest in what was once one of its premier franchises. Two more mobile games followed in the years to come, but both were pretty forgettable. The PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles all came and went without so much as a rumour of a new RR game - although years later we would discover that at some point Bandai Namco Singapore (the original Metroid Prime 4 development studio) was working on a Switch game, but it was cancelled before it was even announced.

There was a smattering of re-releases over the years, including several of the games coming to PSN during the PS3’s lifecycle. In 2018, the subpar PAL version of the amazing R4: Ridge Racer Type-4 was included in the frustrating PlayStation Classic mini console. In 2022, the sequel to Ridge Racer on the PSP, Ridge Racer 2 (not to be confused with the 1994 arcade-only game also called Ridge Racer 2), was added to the PlayStation Plus Premium Classics Collection, followed by Ridge Racer Type 4 in 2023, both of which were made purchasable without a subscription for 10 bucks a little later. However, bar those re-releases and that leaked dev build, we hadn’t heard hide nor hair of one of the best racing series in a real sense for the best part of a decade and a half.

That was until the Switch 2 first Nintendo Direct on the 2nd of April, when it was announced Ridge Racer was making its grand reentrance to the gaming scene… kinda.

You see, the fine folks at Hamster announced the first game in its new line of retro games, Arcade Archives 2 Ridge Racer. Arcade Archives has been a long-running series that has been porting arcade classics (and often times not-so-classics) to modern consoles. From A-Jax to Zing Zing Zip, Hamster has ported 365 arcade games to PS4, Switch, and Xbox One (and another 108 Neo Geo games under the separate ACA Neo Geo collection). Arcade Archives 2 is a new parallel collection that will apparently release more graphically intensive 3D games that presumably will see some noticeable benefit in getting PS5, Xbox Series and Switch 2 specific SKUs - starting with the original arcade Ridge Racer.

So yeah… It’s not really a new Ridge Racer, but hey, if it's good, who cares? Drifting around corners surrounded by the blue skies of that original release should still be a joy. The problem is that this isn’t a good release. I have voiced my displeasure with this version of the game and how it’s being sold in a few places, but I should probably round up all the problems here.

First, Ridge Racer isn’t exclusive to Arcade Archives 2. You see, it turns out, Arcade Archives 2 is less a donation of new games that might need more power and is simply Hamster’s way of conveying that these are the native current-gen versions of the executable. Right now, if you turn on your Switch 1 or PS4, or Xbox One, there is a game you can purchase from the online stores called Arcade Archives Ridge Racer. If you load up your Switch 2, PS5, or Series console, that listing is still there, but there is also a native Arcade Archives 2 Ridge Racer. The difference between these two? Nothing. Well, almost nothing, because while these versions of the game run the exact same, at the same internal resolution and with the same features, the Arcade Archives 2 versions are two dollars/euro/pounds more expensive, jumping from €14.99 to €16.99. 15 bucks is already just kind of out of the range of “impulse purchase” for what ostensibly is a ROM with a Caravan mode, but 17 for a version with no extra features feels pretty cheeky.

The second big problem, and it is a much bigger problem, is that this isn’t a good port. You’d think that Ridge Racer would be one of the few racing games that would fit right at home on a Switch since it's generally thought of as a series that doesn’t use analogue triggers. Most racing games nowadays love analogue triggers, because their countless degrees of input are great for simulating an accelerator. However, the first Ridge Racer released on a PlayStation without analogue triggers. The Dual Analogue (and later DualShock) both had digital shoulder buttons (meaning they could only occupy one of two states: On or Off). As a result, the first Ridge Racer on PlayStation, right up through Ridge Racer 7 on PS3, all used the “X” button to accelerate. At times in the series’ history, this has been seen as something of a negative, a holdover from before racing games standardised. But in 2025, and off the back of an arcade racer like Mario Kart World, it is really refreshing. These are the most arcade-y of arcade racers. The Switch 2 (and most Nintendo consoles, bar the GameCube) also doesn’t have analogue triggers; it has digital buttons, in theory making it the perfect fit for a new Ridge Racer. Just not this Ridge Racer.

I am sure that this game only got released because Hamster funded it in some way, but that means that this game has to be the arcade version and not a port of the PlayStation version, and that’s a problem on the Switch 2. In a cruel twist of fate, the two original arcade Ridge Racers weren’t built for digital buttons. In fact, not only were they designed around an analogue input, but that analogue input was a pedal built into the machine. 

While the drifting that makes the series so iconic was later codified around the idea of letting go of the accelerator for a brief second to start a slide and pressing it again to accelerate out of it, in the arcade version, drifting was performed by feathering the gas lightly. You can’t do this on the Switch 2. Acceleration is still bound to a trigger, but that trigger can only be in an on or an off state, nowhere in between and as a result, it's way harder to drift than it should be. This means that Switch 2’s Arcade Archives Ridge Racer is pretty far and away the worst way to play this game. All this is not helped by the fact that the arcade game also had a steering wheel, and this port hasn’t really smoothed the binding for an analogue stick very well, which is a problem across platforms.

 If we lived in an ideal world, Namco would have ported the PlayStation version of Ridge Racer to Switch 2, or hell, just re-port Type 4 over from PS5, but we don’t live in an ideal world. 

Maybe the world has moved on. Maybe the days of Reiko Nagase being a mild video game industry mascot have faded past the horizon. Maybe we no longer need trailing neon tail lights under a night sky full of fireworks. But I don’t, man, I think we could do with a bit more blue skies, killer tunes, good vibes and wild drifts. Drifts performed with a digital input.