30 years of the Playstation: R4: Ridge Racer Type 4

On September 9, 2025, the Sony Playstation will turn 30 years old in North America. Throughout the month of September, I’ll be exclusively covering games released for Sony’s first entry in the console market, with an emphasis on those that explain, in some way, its unprecedented success. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

You can’t separate the success of Namco’s Ridge Racer from that of Sony’s Playstation. The two worked together — and closely — during this era, both before the actual launch of the console and during its lifespan. Namco, which had previously been more of a Nintendo booster and then a constant presence on NEC and Hudson Soft’s Turbografx-16/PC Engine, had switched allegiances to Sony’s 32-bit machine before 1994. Such was the impact of Sony on Namco — this was not just a one-way relationship — that the latter even tailored their arcade hardware to be similar to that of the Playstation itself to make porting their games over that much easier and familiar to everyone involved.

In fact, this decision to roll with a Playstation-centric mentality changed the way that Namco operated: rather than be in an endless arms race with Sega in the arcades in the push for more and more impressive 3D technology, one that dated back to the faux 3D of Pole Position which had followed Sega’s own chase-cam racer, Turbo, and saw Sega answer Namco’s Winning Run franchise with Virtua Racing in 1992. Namco would take a step back and focus on the level of 3D that could be achieved in a living room, which Playstation’s hardware, thanks to the technology becoming less expensive faster than even the likes of Sega could have predicted, allowed for.

Which brought the world Ridge Racer, an arcade game that came out in 1993 and was the first arcade title with texture-mapped 3D. While that sounds like it contradicts the previous statement about Namco taking “a step back” hardware-wise, that’s the thing: this was the level of 3D that was suddenly going to be in living rooms without it being overly expensive. The 32-bit, polygon-capable 3DO hit shelves in October of 1993, the same month that Ridge Racer released in Japanese arcades with its cutting-edge tech, at a cost of $699. The Playstation would arrive in North America just under two years later, with improved hardware designed with 3D as the main use of its potential, for $299. While The Need for Speed on the 3DO was extremely impressive in August of 1994 when it released, its 3D was nowhere near as detailed as that of Ridge Racer’s, and it focused far more on realistic handling and speeds both as a game ethos and because that’s what the 3DO could handle with a polygonal racer. Ridge Racer, on the other hand, is designed around the idea of you losing control around corners owing to how fast you’re capable of going, and with the world shifting around you at high speeds as you drift. You don’t have to look any further than what the 3DO put out two years after launch compared to what the Playstation kicked off with to see the difference between what each system was capable of, power-wise.

Ridge Racer’s port, which was not huge by modern standards in terms of what was available within it but was still meatier than the arcade game, helped the Playstation establish itself as a promising machine. The Sega Saturn, by virtue of being Sega’s machine, promised killer arcade-style racing experiences — the company had been porting their ahead-of-the-curve arcade racing games to the Master System and Genesis, neither of which necessarily had the horsepower to keep up with the ambition and capabilities of the arcade teams and the hardware they could work on, but the Saturn promised to narrow that gap. Daytona USA launched on May 11 alongside the Saturn in North America to show as much; that Ridge Racer compared favorably to it on the Playstation did Sega no favors, as having Namco in Sony’s corner meant that, out of the gate, it was clear that the Saturn wasn’t the only system out there capable of providing top-of-the-line arcade racers for your living room.

Sega’s own employees knew this was going to be an issue before Ridge Racer even launched, per a Kotaku feature on how Panzer Dragoon defined the Saturn era:

Ridge Racer would launch to significant acclaim on the Playstation, and would be followed by a console-only sequel, Ridge Racer Revolution, as well as Rage Racer. Each of those added bits and pieces of what would become the norm for Ridge Racer games — refining the drifting, adding in a rear view mirror when using the interior car view, expanding the number of cars and modes, and, with Rage Racer, a grand prix.

The fourth Playstation-specific entry, R4: Ridge Racer Type 4, took all of this and created one of the greatest games on the Playstation — not just racing games, but games in general. Ridge Racer Type 4 looked excellent in action, handled even better, and featured some peak Namco art direction and Playstation aesthetic with its emphasis on yellow-and-black menus, and both courses and cars that paid homage to the company’s vast history in both the arcade and console space.

The soundtrack, composed by the Namco Sound Team, is also an all-timer. There is just over an hour of music in it, with some songs dedicated to menus or the between-races portion of the grand prix mode, and the rest of the soundtrack meant for the races themselves — you can pick which track you’d like to play during the loading screen for said races, or just let shuffle do its thing and pick a banger for you. They are all bangers, you’re in for a treat regardless, especially if you’re here for acid jazz, drum and bass, breakbeat, and the occasional distorted guitar. Just hit play on the below and listen while you read and beyond.

Ridge Racer Type 4 once again has a grand prix mode, which also serves as a story mode. You pick one of four different teams to join, each with its own manager that you’ll be spending time with in between races — these also serve as different difficulty levels. And from there you choose which car manufacturer that you’ll be working with, which determines what style of drift that you’ll be utilizing. There are the straight-up drift-based vehicles, which, to properly corner and turn, require you to release the gas or tap the brake, depending on the severity of the turn and how much drifting you want to do, and then press on the gas once again while maintaining control with the D-pad. Then there are the grip-based cars, which see you turn, step on the brake, then continue to tap the brakes as you complete the turn. The grip-based cars, as you can probably figure out on your own, feature excellent traction and aren’t as “loose” as the drift-based cars. If you mess up your turns with the grip cars, you’ll fall behind but not go careening out of control. Drift the wrong way, and you can go slamming into a wall at high speed, or have to fight to regain control as you veer back and forth locked into the drift.

Not drifting at all in order to avoid these risks is just not going to work for you, however: your opponents will drift, and they will cut time off of their race times by doing so. You must respond by drifting even more effectively, or else you’re just not going to come out ahead. And you have to in order to complete the grand prix, which is made up of three separate heats, each with multiple races within them. The first heat features a pair of two-lap races, the second jumps that to three laps but sticks at two races, and then the third heat introduces four races with five laps each. The last race is considered part of the third heat, but is really its own thing with its own car, as you’re told to forget about drifting in the way that you’ve been using it to this point and instead focus on pure, unrelenting speed — knowing where and when to turn to give yourself time to straighten out again while flying at significantly faster speeds than your previous cars could achieve is the goal here.

You’re able to save after each heat, which could prove necessary since you only get three chances per heat to make it through, and the requirements for moving ahead can get strict. If you don’t finish in at least third place in the two first-heat races, you don’t advance. You have to finish in second in the second heat, and in first place in every third heat race to continue on and, eventually, win the whole thing. The story for each of the four will change a little bit depending on if you can overperform those requirements; the race team managers won’t open up to you any faster, necessarily, but they will be less dismissive of you and your abilities, at least. Finish in second instead of first in the initial heat for the French team, for instance, and you will be subjected to rants from the team’s manager about how if you can’t win this thing for her then she’s going to be forced into an arranged marriage and away from this role by her father, who owns the team. Oh, she also doesn’t know anything about cars at this point, and has no constructive criticism to give you for your performance, as she gets all of her information from “Donald.” So you’ll enjoy that.

However! As you move along in the story, she starts to get interested in the racing and your performance for more reasons than just her own desire to avoid an arranged marriage and getting a new job. She invests herself in your success, and you find out there’s another, less self-preservation-y reason for her to want you to win the grand prix, as well. Each of the stories has its own little arc like this, though they do vary in terms of what the central theme of each is. One race team manager is trying to get over the death of a previous racer that he blames himself for, for instance, and as you can imagine he keeps you at a distance early on, to the point of not getting too worked up about any success that you might have beyond the minimum needed to advance.

The four teams are Micro Mouse Mappy from France (Easy), the Pac Racing Team from Japan (Normal), Racing Team Solvalou from Italy, (Hard), and Dig Racing Team from America (Expert). Each has a Namco franchise theme to them — Solvalou comes from the Xevious franchise, in case that one wasn’t as obvious to you as “Pac Racing Team” or the one that straight-up says “Mappy” in it — as do the tracks and many of the cars. For most of the cars, it’s just decals and such on the vehicles that pay tribute to the company’s past, but race tracks have their nods plastered right into the courses themselves or their names. Phantomile is the least subtle of the bunch, since Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is the name of the first game in that series. Just enjoy that Namco has one universe where the likes of Dig Dug, Mr. Driller, Galaga, and Baraduke all simultaneously exist, and another where those all exist but as things you name racing teams and tracks after.

Ridge Racer Type 4 has roughly one million cars to unlock, or at least it feels that way, but unless you want to be a completionist about things, you don’t have to worry about it too much: the vast, vast majority of these are just different color or detail variations on a core set of models, and you can unlock quite a few of the meaningfully different ones just by playing the grand prix at every difficulty, and with every combination of car. So, you unlock a few different cars each time through, getting a new one before the second and third heats, as well as before the final race. These are given to you as part of the story, with the idea being that now you’ve replaced your initial poor vehicle with one that should handle better and has another gear to it, and then that gets tuned up to allow for yet another gear for the third heat, before you get the revamped version of it that goes significantly faster for the final race. You have to race for each team four times, with a different car manufacturer providing the vehicles each time out, in order to unlock all of the cars that can be unlocked through this method.

The reason that it takes forever to unlock all of the cars for your garage is because there are requirements beyond simply playing through the grand prix mode’s stories in various configurations, that get as granular as “what were your lap times?” rather than just your finish in each heat (which also plays into things). Why go through the process of unlocking all 320 cars? To get the Pac-Man car, of course, the only truly secret vehicle in the game. Basically, this is all just a goal to get you to experience everything Ridge Racer Type 4 has to offer, again and again, in order for you to be a true master of every single course, every single car, every single turn in the game. It’s not really about the 320 cars, most of which are barely distinguishable from each other besides some visuals, but the journey that gets you to that destination.

Of course, you don’t have to play Ridge Racer Type 4 to that point to find enjoyment in it: even just getting through the four stories in grand prix while mastering the various car manufacturers to get a feel for a preference for grip vs. drift can be plenty, never mind that you have time attack or vs. races to work with. It’s a true classic, and while it’s not as expansive as modern racers that fill themselves with dozens of tracks and more “real” cars to unlock, Ridge Racer Type 4 doesn’t have to be those things to be enjoyable. It looks and sounds incredible, it handles beautifully, and it’s a joy to play — it’s an excellent conclusion to one of the Playstation’s most important franchises, one that helped establish the system’s bonafides right out of the gate.

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