Blimey, Ridge Racer was good, wasn't it? Remember when Namco's series used to mark the glorious beginning of a new PlayStation hardware generation and was the first game you'd pick up with your shiny new Sony system? Those were the days.
It's sadly been a few decades since Ridge Racer was a "killer app" (shockingly, it's been 13 years since we got a new entry on consoles at all, and that was the spin-off Ridge Racer Unbounded, which doesn't even count in the eyes of some fans), and even though the series isn't totally forgotten, we've grown tired of even thinking about how good it would be to play a brand-new instalment.
Thank goodness that indie developers are here to pick up the slack, then. Jamie of Mixtape Games—creator of Hellscreen (billed as an FPS with a rear-view mirror) and the brilliantly chilled-out Vaporware Pinball—has signalled his intention to create a spiritual successor to the original Ridge Racer, complete with a PS1-like aesthetic.
"One thing I want to explore is PS1 aesthetic as a style choice rather [than] a limitation, so I want to do a kind of PS 1.5 vibe," says the developer on social media. "This would be something that is very visibly PS1 but omits things like draw distance, affine mapping and polycounts (though there will be limits on polygons on curves). I will probably allow for more than one environment map, vertex texture blending and amount of textures being to be used. It really depends on what my research throws up."
Obviously, this project—should it happen at all—is at a very early stage, but given the quality of Mixtape's other releases, we feel it's one worth keeping tabs on.
Man, a new Ridge Racer-style title really would be the best.