What is your favourite Ridge Racer?

Since the original Ridge Racer was released, there have been a lot of sequels released in the Arcade, and also more versions for home systems.

But what was your favourite Arcade version? (these are just arcade releases, not including the many more home only versions released over the years).

For me it was the third game in the series, Rave Racer. More cars, some customisation, more interesting tracks, which required a lot more practice to get right, but once mastered they were great fun to race around. Especially one quite tricky bend on the first track which I remember so well. For beginners they could never get around that corner without crashing, but once mastered it was the favourite corner of the track.

I had Rave Racer on the Playstation and played it a lot to master it. Jumping on the arcade version I could instantly get some good lap times and win the races. I bet I couldn't even get around the tracks without crashing these days! :lol:

Did you now get the Ridge Racer fever when seeing that cab :)

To be honest, I never played any of the series, only had once a demo on the PSX, and I think I played one of them for 2-3 races on the PS2.

I also played the PS3 demo, which was not bad, I think that must be Ridge Racer 7. That was in the beginning of the next gen consoles, thus it looked really great, but I guess if you compare it to newer racing games now, it wouldn't shine anymore. The handling felt good though, once mastered, it was fun to slide through the corners. Have to check if the demo is still installed.

Yes, I've been a fan of the Ridge Racer games since they began, and seeing that cabinet sparked interest again. Once you have mastered how to drift and slide around corners, the games are great fun.

In fact, I will start another thread about the home versions. ;)

Can you play them via MAME?

Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer 2 and Rave Racer are all available and will load. I gave Ridge Racer a try a while back and it did a reasonable job of trying to emulate the game. It had sound, the game worked and everything was as it should be, but the framerate was a bit slow and meant it wasn't fully playable. It's worth a try. I've not tested it on the latest versions of MAME so it might have improved even more.

A video showing Ridge Racer Full scale being played. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eyUOBsrjDY

I just hope that nobody pukes in the car after such a ride :lol: