It’s a very fun game, and I do recommend trying it to any Ridge Racer fan, but this article isn’t really about Ridge Racer V, because that game stands as the last in the series to exude any kind of confidence about its own identity. Clearly, it was exciting enough for the critics of the time, as Ridge Racer V reviewed very well (sitting at a proud but modest 78 on Metacritic). After all, Ridge Racer V was another solid entry but this time built on more advanced tech, and that is exciting. So perhaps we can forgive Eiichi Saita for assuming that simply repeating yesterday’s victories would be enough.

After all, the generation didn’t really pick up steam until Sony’s console dropped. Namco couldn’t have foreseen this, though, when developing their launch title for the PlayStation 2. Some struggled at first but found their footing, like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil, but others completely failed to impress a quickly expanding market. IPs that had risen to stardom in the early 3D era now had to prove that they were more than just a gimmick from a time when some fancy triangles were the height of novelty. Genres and IPs could rise and fall in just a few short years, starting strong as titans of the medium at the beginning of the decade but losing all relevance by the end - just look at 3D platformers like Ratchet and Clank, Jak, and Sly Cooper.īut it wasn’t just the newcomers struggling. Technology finally allowed for almost anything to be attempted, so that’s exactly what many did. There’s some merit to that, but I would argue that 2000-2010 was a far more brutal time. Plenty of gaming journalists and video essayists have pointed to the transition to 3D as a cutthroat time for long-standing developers and series’, with many failing to effectively translate their gameplay to the land of the Z axis. After spending the last decade getting to grips with 3D spaces and how to interact with them, the next decade would see huge leaps in game design, solidifying a lot of the trends and maturing into the stable gaming landscape we have today.

The millennium marked a crucial turning point for gaming history. So, the cars and car mechanics are a lot more detailed, the backgrounds are more realistic and we could manage 60fps in real-time to bring out the ‘emotion’ of the game.’Įiichi Saita, Ridge Racer V Senior Project Director (Official UK Playstation 2 Magazine - Issue 1)Įiichi Saita, if only you knew how damaging this philosophy would become. At the same time we've put a lot of new things into the game which only the PS2 can allow. I would highly recommend reading part 1 if you are also interested in Ridge Racer’s golden era.) I think the main thing we wanted to achieve was a game that brought out the same emotions that the original Ridge Racer provoked on the PSone. (This article is the second part of a two-part series.

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