R4: Ridge Racer Type 4

Release Date - December 3, 1998 (JP)

Developer - Namco

Publisher - Namco

Platform - PlayStation

The engine roars in a primal, straining cry as the smell of brake-dust and burning rubber fills the air. The tyres join in the choir of mechanised song as they slowly disintegrate on the asphalt, going sideways in a power-slide dangerously close to the steel barriers on trackside. Through all of this, one thought dominates the driver’s mind; ‘Is the beautiful French lady who owns this race-team going to ask me out if I win?’

Ridge Racer Type 4 is a game that’s all about giving you white-knuckle racing action and making sure you look (and feel) damn good while doing it. Gran Turismo this ain’t, with the game being hyper focused on arcade racing and mastering a selection of tracks with high-powered sports cars. This is a game akin to Sega’s classic OutRun, as evidenced by the opening cinematic that combines hair-raising street racing with picking up a hitch-hiking bombshell (the Ridge Racer recurring race queen, Reiko Nagase) with an infectious and upbeat song playing throughout, complete with vocals, naturally. Hell, even the main menu is seemingly in sync with the beautiful instrumentals playing in the background, everything about this game is telling you to have a great time.

Even at sunset, the racing is red hot.

This intro sets up a racing game that has some very novel and enjoyable quirks to set it apart from both the crop of sim racers and arcade racers available at the time. The gameplay for the most part is very arcade and action focused, not unlike many of the game’s contemporaries such as Daytona USA or Scud Racer. Unlike those games R4 features a pretty robust single player offering and some interesting car combinations.

Reiko is in need of a lift, the sun is shining and the music is great. Let’s drive.

Starting with the car combination, when going into the game’s ‘Grand Prix’ mode you’re asked to join one of four different racing teams. An American team with a rich history of victories that has found itself in a slump recently, a French team with a new owner, a Japanese team competing for the first time and an Italian team known for a record number of victories. Each team has not only its own back-story, but also a unique tuning profile. The French team is known for tuning their cars for exceptional handling making for an easier experience, whereas the Italian team will tune their cars to be very high performance, but very demanding on the driver.

Different teams will provide different challenges.

Once a team has been chosen, the player will choose a manufacturer. Again, these four manufacturers are from the USA, France, Japan and Italy. Each manufacturer will provide a car that has different strengths and weaknesses and is either a ‘Grip’ or ‘Drift’ type car. Just with these four choices of manufacturer and race team, the game offers up 16 potential combinations as a starting point to take through the ‘Grand Prix’ mode. Each option catering to different difficulty and play-style preferences.

Check out that beautiful lighting from the headlights.

Once all the selections are taken care of, it’s time for the rubber to hit the road, both literally and figuratively by entering the ‘Real Racing Roots Grand Prix ‘99’. As mentioned previously, Ridge Racer R4 is an arcade style racing game, often focusing on high speeds and aggressive driving in short races. Thankfully, the controls are superb and players will quickly come to grips with their car’s abilities. Grip cars will require careful braking and steering control to take corners at the apex, whereas Drift style cars will have a much more ‘loose’ feel when you pump the brakes and the back end flies out sideways, causing you to screech around corners at high speeds. Cars feel fast, the steering is very responsive, and collisions aren’t a race-ending event (although they will slow you down, so driving carefully is still important). The emphasis here is definitely on the action.

The game is littered with Namco references.

Each Grand Prix season is made up of two Heats and the final Grand Prix. As you progress through the season, there will be increasing pressure to place in the top 3 to qualify, and eventually, to win the race and finish in 1st place. 

As you qualify through the various stages of the Grand Prix, you’ll unlock newer, faster cars from your manufacturer too, on the condition that you’re performing well enough for the manufacturer to trust you with the cars! The cars get faster and the racing and difficulty gets more intense. It will probably take a few tries to clear the Grand Prix mode, even on the easier settings. These new cars that are unlocked can be added to your Garage, and there are over 300 potential cars that can be collected through playing the Grand Prix mode or unlocking the secret ‘Extra Trial’ mode where you race for pink slips! By going to the garage, you can then even customise your car's decals, and even make your own decals from scratch! 

Little ‘Visual Novel’ style interludes between the race add some character and variety to the racing teams.

As you progress through the season, your team manager, a different personality for each team, will comment on your progress. These reactions and the story may change depending on your performance, with managers lauding your multiple first place finishes, or warning you that your performance isn’t up to scratch.

On top of the usual feedback around performance, each racing team has a storyline that is progressed between races, through visual novel styled monologues from the team manager. Teams struggle with financial woes, pressure is put on new managers to perform and maybe even a romance emerges. Each manager has a distinct personality which gives each play-through a distinct feel. It all goes a long way to adding some additional content and fun for players looking to do more than just shave seconds off their best lap times. It makes for a very unique and compelling single-player experience.

Nothing beats a sunny day on the grid.

For those who want to get some friends in on the action, the game also features a great split-screen racing mode for two. The quality of graphics and speed are retained, making for some intense races.

This would all be for nought if the tracks weren’t fun to race on, but as with everything else in this game, the track designs are a lot of fun. While the number of tracks isn’t huge, there is a lot of character and variety in each one. Different times of day and different locales make for some really cool and memorable races. While racing on country roads, planes will fly overhead doing barrel-rolls. When racing in the city, digital displays will have race updates and advertisements in bright lights. These tracks are beautifully detailed, with stunningly rendered environments and some beautiful lighting effects. Racing in the late afternoon sunset or going through a tunnel at night and being bathed in the artificial lights makes for some great shots. These moments are all showcased in some cool replays complete with some television-style camera angles to enjoy after each race as well.

Races take place at various times from sunny days to neon-lit nights.

While there are four main ‘tracks’ to race on, there are actually multiple variations of each, as well as reverse modes that bring the total up considerably. It’ll definitely take some time to master all of them, or even just the tracks that present themselves in the Grand Prix mode.

Whether it is during the race itself or while watching the replay, the action is accompanied by some more awesome music. Hiroshi Okubo was the sound director and lead composer, but the game contains a variety of tracks by various artists. The overall feeling is one of upbeat and jazzy tunes that really compliment the bright colours and fast action of the game overall.

Try not to get too distracted by the scenery…

R4 isn’t the first title of the series on the PlayStation, with the original being an arcade port and launch title for the fledgling console back in 1994. By 1998 the series had already seen a number of spin-offs and iterations in arcade and on the PlayStation, so had become something of a known entity. The game was well reviewed with many praising the great balance of depth and arcade action, and the phenomenal graphics. Consumers were keen on the latest Ridge Racer entry too, with the game selling over a million copies in Japan and USA alone.

If you’re a fan of arcade racers, this is one of the best out there. Even to the more casual racing fans, the robust single player and sheer number of cars to unlock provides a great entry-way to this genre, so please do check it out!

One of the great racing games of the era, and perhaps of all time.