Rave Racer was the arcade-only sequel to Ridge Racer & Ridge Racer 2.
(arcade version)
It was released in arcades in 1995 around the time Ridge Racer Revolution was released on PS1 in Japan.
Rave Racer was a totally different game than
(and not to be confused with) Rage Racer on PS1 that came out in late 1996 in Japan and 1997 rest of the world.
Although the Rave Racer tracks are playable in Ridge Racers for PSP, the original game was never released for home.
There were rumors / reports about a Nintendo 64 version being in the works but that never materialized. Namco probably canceled plans for it after N64 failed to take Japan by storm. Ridge Racer 64 followed some years later.
However there was a very real PC version of Rave Racer being developed for the original Videologic PowerVR graphic cards. It was announced in late 1995 or early 1996 along with Air Combat 22 and Tekken 1 or 2, as Namco's support for the PowerVR cards and its native API.
PowerVR PC Rave Racer was shown in rolling video form, and perhaps playable versions at trade shows in 1996.In November 1995, Namco Ltd., the leading arcade game manufacturer, announced it will be porting games such as "Rave Racer," "Air Combat 22" and "Tekken" to PowerVR.
Here's an article from Next Generation magazine, July 1996 on the prototype PC version for PowerVR cards which was never finished & released.
I've heard of some playable demos as well as texture mapping work being on CD-ROM for PowerVR developers but never seen anything on that.
The PC version of Rave Racer was certainly more impressive than the PlayStation version of Ridge Racer, RRR, and was higher resolution than Rage Racer and RR4.
I think a PS1 version of Rave Racer would've been possible, judging by the extremely impressive work Namco did that resulted in Ridge Racer High Spec (60fps, exellent texture, shading, lighting, 640x480 res or close to it unlike any of the other RR games on PS1) which was included in RR4.
Thankfully, back in 2002, an emulator was released called VivaNonno which emulates Namco's System 22 arcade hardware pretty well, and EXTREMELY fast, so Rave Racer became playable even on modest PCs, whereas, it's not really playable in MAME.