Ridge Racer Type 4 offers peak arcade racing action on the original PlayStation.
What Is It? R4 is an arcade racing game. As you might expect, the game has you racing various cars across various tracks trying to chase victory.
The primary game mode is Grand Prix. It is a series of eight races spread across three heats. You select your crew team out of four choices based on Namco arcade classics (Pac-Man, Dig Dug, etc…). You then select one of four fictional auto manufacturers to use for the Grand Prix. Your finish in each race determines what kind of car (or upgrade) you unlock for the next race. Complete the requirements for each race and you will have won the Real Racing Roots ‘99 Cup.
Outside of Grand Prix mode, you can chase the best times in Time Trial mode or go head-to-head against the most powerful cars in the game in Extra Trial mode.
None of that is terribly enthusiastic because the game modes simply aren’t amazing. Thankfully, the important part, the racing, is. R4 really hits a sweet spot of being an early arcade racer that doesn’t allow you to hold down the gas the entire race. If you hit a wall here, it will slow you to a crawl and make winning the race difficult. However, it isn’t so unforgiving as to be frustrating for racing novices like myself. The different cars feel and control differently so there’s a learning curve there, and the progression of learning how to properly use them is swift and satisfying.
It is fairly easy to win the Grand Prix without having to restart as the game gives you a few retries per race, but I also rarely won any race on my first try. I had to learn the new car/track, adjust, improve, and hopefully that was enough to win by the time my attempts ran out. The game provides you with cars capable of winning, you just have to learn how to do so.
Visually, the game looks good for the era but definitely a bit dated at this point. The only real complaint is how tough it is to see the cars you are trying to catch up to. They appear as small specks on the screen when they first come into view and it can be tough deciphering a car and a random background decoration. This is a small gripe, the game remains entirely playable, just don’t go in expecting anything other than PS1 graphics.
The Best Part: I’ll get blasted for this because I’m not much of a sim racer at all, but R4 definitely feels like a good split between arcade and simulation controls. It is definitely arcade-y in that it is fairly forgiving. However, there is some physics at play here between the various drift styles the cars offer and you must learn how to use them in order to win these races. It is definitely more arcade-leaning, but to my untrained fingers it feels like there are some simulation aspects mixed in as well.
The Worst Part: The short main gameplay mode. Grand Prix is a total of eight races with increasingly strict finish conditions (top three is good enough early, but you must win the last few). It is a good mode and I do like that you can unlock cars here without much grinding, but I feel like a meatier story mode would have kept me coming back a bit more.
The Verdict: I have never considered myself a massive racing game fan, but R4 hooked me from the start. The game does a wonderful job conveying the speeds your cars are travelling at. It isn’t uncommon for racing games to make 200 MPH feel like 20, but R4 does not suffer from that issue. Playing through all of the different crews with the different manufacturers is a bit repetitive, but the driving experience is so much fun that it doesn’t bother me at all.
How to Play: PlayStation 1
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