Mark Plays… RR64: Ridge Racer 64 (N64) – Lacto’s Post Work Unwind With Waffelage (1-2-2024)

#Nintendo64 #RidgeRacer64 #RMG 🏁🏎️🚗🚙🚕🚓🚔

Ridge Racer 64 is a racing video game that was released for the Nintendo 64 in 2000. It is part of the popular Ridge Racer series developed and published by Namco. The game received positive reviews and is considered one of the standout racing titles for the Nintendo 64.

It has has some Solid Gameplay: Ridge Racer 64 maintains the solid and arcade-style gameplay that the series is known for on the PlayStaion. The controls are responsive all be it rather twitchy compared to the Playstation version. There’s the well known drifting that you either love or hate but is a a trademark of the Ridge Racer series. It’s all well-implemented.

It has quite a few varied Tracks: compared to the Playstation original. There are city streets, desert and mountain roads. All with their distinct features difficult spots to master.

The Graphics and Performance: were outstanding for the Nintendo 64. Storage was sparse on the N64 game carts whereas the PlayStation had about 10x as much room on its CDs. Despite those limitations with help of sound compression, graphic assets and textures beeing highly compressed and a lot of trickery put in place to hide the low polygon and low texture qualities the N64 had enough raw horse power to pull of a very decent Ridge Racer game. The game runs smoothly and maintained a consistent grame rate, which for me contributed to an immersive racing experience.

Compared to the original Playstation Content and Modes were quite numerous. The game has a range of game modes, such as Grand Prix, Time Attack, and Versus mode. The Grand Prix mode allows players to progress through a series of races with increasing difficulty. The variety of modes and the inclusion of multiplayer options ads to the game’s replay value.

In the Audio and Music-department the Nintendo64 isn’t the console with the highest track record when it comes to audio. The sound assets often ended up having to be very compressed in order to fit properly within the limited space of the carts. Back then the large carts were quite expensive to make. The tunes are nice and fit the game well. But the tracks on the PSOne, PSP are more diverse and sound a whole lot nicer.The sound-effects and car-engines are represented fairly well. Ridge Racer 64 sold well enough and was appreciated because of it being part of the Ridge Racer series and for me and many other Nintendo 64 owners it was a must- have arcade racer. It is however very much its own beast. Being similar enough to the offering on the PSone yet be quicky and Nintendo64 specific enough to stand out enough and be different enough even for PSOne owners who are familiar with their games – to go out and buy this game as well. A very cool racer that I must say would be missed in any decent N64 game collection.

The PAL is significantly worse than NTSC version here; if possible get an NTSC compatible console with NTSC carts. The N64 is region protected and for PAL units it’s not easy to play NTSC carts without some majer alterations. It’s cheaper and easier
to get an American machine. NTSC to NTSC-J or vice versa however is surprisingly easy! Playing Japanese games is fun!

The Nintendo DS sports a version of Ridge Racer that basically is a port of this Nintendo 64 Ridge Racer and if you like this and/or own a Nintendo DS you may want to give that a whirl!

After work I often have very little consecutive free time and whenever I feel like playing a game I seem to resort to retro-games or arcade games (be it retro or more modern). The Ridge Racer series is series of games that I tend to pick up and play again and again. When it comes to Arcade racing Ridge Racer-series, Metropolis Street Racing / Project Gotham Racing, Sega Rally series, Outrun 2 series are my go to arcade racers.

Chapters
00:00:00 – Intro
00:43:21 – Gameplay

Sources:
(1) Wikipedia.
(2) GameFAQs on gamespot
(3) Personal memories

Sound track at the start of the clip is licensed music from Epidemic Sound. Poison Lips by Easton can be heard.

Thanks for watching – LactobacillusPrime

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