Ridge Racer Type 4 double disc????

[natinh0]

Hi guys, i found a Japanese mint copy of RIDGE RACER TYPE 4 - PSone dirty cheap and i wonder what is the extra disc?
It says Ridge racer Turbo.
Thanks

[cityside75]

It's a high resolution, higher frame rate version of the original Ridge Racer. It was included to demonstrate how far Playstation development had come at the time. I believe it includes the original Ridge Racer as well for comparison. It's worth checking out.

[megasdkirby]

US versions also had it.

[natinh0]

WHAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat????????
You mean the FULL version of the original game?

[megasdkirby]

Dunno since it's been years since I've opened my copy. But I do know that it does have a second, high resolution version of the game.

Dunno if it's complete or a demo.

[chrisbid]

its more like a demo, i believe there is only one car and one track. the US version also contains movies from other namco playstaion games

[Nebagram]

US versions also had it.

As did PAL versions. As freebies go, it's pretty tasty.

[InsaneDavid]

its more like a demo, i believe there is only one car and one track. the US version also contains movies from other namco playstaion games

Including a movie showing some of the stuff that got sliced out of the USA version of Ace Combat 3.

[natinh0]

thanks guys, gonna buy it

[jdc]

I remember how disappointed I was when I fired up the extras disc and found the other demos to be non-playable. Oh well....I'm a huge Ridge fan and to this day no other Ridge game has the music or atmosphere that Namco managed to create on R4.

[We Are Ninja]

^ Truth. R4 was epic on many, many levels. The music, the presentation, the courses, the graphics, the Jogcon...

[Kid Ice]

Agreed x2. R4 was the pinnacle of the series. I like Ridge Racer 6/7, but I wish they would replicate the look and feel of R4 in a modern game.

[A Black Falcon]

There are a couple of playable demos on the Ridge Racer Turbo disc, actually... specifically, there are playable demos of Klonoa and Tekken 3. There are also videos of Ace Combat 3, Point Blank, Point Blank 2, and Time Crisis, and slideshows of Namco Museums 1 and 3 and "Greatest Hits" (aka a set of slides showing Namco games now in the Greatest Hits line). The Klonoa demo's something to definitely play if you don't have the full game, at least.

As for Ridge Racer Turbo itself, it's more full game than demo, really. A remix, maybe? Original Ridge Racer mode is definitely a demo -- there are no options at all, you simply press start and race the one race available. Ridge Racer Turbo mode is a much more full-featured game, however, at least in comparison to the original Ridge Racer. It has both variations of the Ridge Racer track, all the cars from the original Ridge Racer game, and supports saving.

Now, the original Ridge Racer only had the same "two" tracks. That's right, Ridge Racer 1 had one track with two variations, no multiplayer support, and that's it. You start out with a normal race on each of the two variations, then do a timetrial and a 1v1 race, then harder mirror versions of all four races, then you're done. Very weak feature set, really... it makes me wonder a bit why the game was so popular. But then, lots of racing games then had only a few tracks and no multiplayer... but still, one track with two variants really was pushing it. But it was popular and successful, obviously... very much so.

Other than the improved graphics and framerate, Ridge Racer Turbo's biggest change gameplay-wise was in the number of cars you race against. While in the original game you race against a full field of cars, in Ridge Racer Turbo you have only one opponent in each race. The game still has eight races total, but they're all time-trial and 1v1 races, instead of having any with a full field. The other significant limitation is that there are only two audio tracks, likely because the rest of the space was taken up by the other contents of the disc. So you don't get a full soundtrack. Oh, and they didn't add analog controller support, sadly, so you still need a neGcon or wheel if you want analog controls. Also no multiplayer, like the original.

But still, it has all the cars of the original game, saves your high scores and races won, has the same one ("two") tracks as the original game, etc. Think of it as a remix of the original with a new selection of races to win, pretty much, but with only one opponent or just the clock and little music variety. It's absolutely worth playing, though.


As for R4, I'm not much of a series fan and only have R4 (with the Ridge Racer Turbo disc) and Ridge Racer 64, and I had RR64 years before I got R4. It's an annoying, frustrating game, where you have to finish first in every race to unlock the next one, a quite hard task by the middle of the game... I never got past about halfway through RR64. Still, it has four player splitscreen multiplayer (as do many N64 racing games), three tracks each with three variants, very nice graphics... R4 obviously has more tracks, but it's two player only and the graphics definitely aren't quite as good. I'd expect that, given that the N64 is more powerful, but somehow I was hoping for something a little better... oh well. I haven't put much time into R4. But I do more prefer futuristic or over-the-top (SF Rush, for instance) racing games to things like Daytona or Ridge Racer.

[tubeway]

What were the Namco racing titles that came with special controllers? One was the Negcon, but wasn't there also one that was shaped like a wheel that you turned? hrm...

[jdc]

Man, I remember Ridge 64. That's one that I don't own, forgot about and now must track down a complete of. It's a bad game, I'll agree there. The Ridge physics weren't right. You could be a Ridge master and suck at that game.

[parallaxscroll]

Ridge Racer Turbo (U.S.) aka Ridge Racer High-Spec/Hi-Spec (Japan).

It is a high resolution, high framerate (60fps) Ridge Racer demo with improved texture-mapping, improved gouraud shading, improved lighting and tweaked car models. Hi-spec / Turbo brings the PlayStation Ridge Racer experience much closer to the original 1993 System 22 arcade Ridge Racer, compared to the first PS1 conversion released in 1994 & 1995, although it's still not 100% arcade perfect. Ridge Racer Hi-Spec/Turbo was not quite the full game, but almost, and more than a normal short demo as others have mentioned. It includes a very short demo of the original, low-resolution, 30fps PS1 version for comparison purposes. Ridge Racer Hi-Spec/Turbo was, IMO, extremely impressive, given the significant disparity between the low-end PlayStation console/System 11 arcade board of 1994, and the high-end System 22 arcade board of 1993.

[Oobgarm]

What were the Namco racing titles that came with special controllers? One was the Negcon, but wasn't there also one that was shaped like a wheel that you turned? hrm...

NeGcon

Jogcon

Only two I am aware of.