The PS1’s most important launch game (Bandai Namco)
A reader shares his fond memories of playing Ridge Racer on the original PlayStation and explains why it was so influential on the rest of his gaming life.
I have enjoyed all the discussion of PlayStation’s 30 years in the business over the last week or so and after feeling so pessimistic about Sony for so long it’s been nice to feel warm and fuzzy about them again. They’ve even had a good marketing campaign for it, with the kids through the ages unwrapping their presents, which adds to the cosy feelings.
The original PlayStation was my first console when I was 12. Before that I’d just played on a friend’s Mega Drive and another’s Amiga, but I’d never owned either myself. There’re no embarrassing photos of me in my pyjamas, ripping the wrapping paper off as if my life depended on it, but I was definitely super excited. Especially as I knew it came with a top notch game: Ridge Racer.
Or at least I’d heard it was top notch. Unlike GC, I had never seen it in arcades as, in my experience, it was actually quite a rare coin-op and so all I knew is that it was a racing game where the graphics looked completely real. That seems laughable when you look at it nowadays and yet I still think there’s an elegant simplicity to it that matches the equally simple but still very fun gameplay.
People talk about the moment they first saw Super Mario 64 as a milestone event, a switch from 2D to 3D that has never been matched again. But I missed out on that too. I didn’t know anyone that had a N64 and I never saw the game until years after it first came out and it was no longer a groundbreaker.
For me, that special moment of realisation, where I felt the gaming world morph from 2D to 3D, happened right there in Ridge Racer on the PS1. It may have had only one track, but I don’t know how many hundreds of hours I happily put into it, trying to unlock everything, get better times, and do weird things like hit the helicopter.
I still feel the game looks good today and seeing it in action it makes me feel nostalgic in a way I rarely ever am usually, about games or anything else. I’ve joked before that the PlayStation has never got better for me since then and obviously that’s not really true – there have been plenty of better games on each PlayStation console.
But in terms of that magic feeling, that sense that a new age has come and you are right there at the start of it… nothing has ever beaten that. I understand it was the same for Super Mario 64 players and it’s sad that improvements in graphics have now slowed to almost a stop, so it’s never likely that feeling will be repeated.
That doesn’t mean we can’t be wowed by graphics anymore, as there are tons of amazing looking games every year, but it’s never the same quantum leap as it was with the first PlayStation and Ridge Racer. VR is the closest thing but while I don’t own a headset I have played them before and while the effect is impressive all the games still seem like tech demos to me.
I suppose you could argue that Ridge Racer was as well, to at least some degree, but for me it will always be my fondest memory of the original PlayStation and the most influential game when it comes to my love of gaming.
By reader DaleL
Wow, what a start! This is just what I wanted to see (Bandai Namco)
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