R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1)
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 is a racing game from 25 years ago, so when hearing that it’s held in high regard it’s easy to write it off as a standard racing game that was elevated simply for having the best visuals and driving for its time. It truly is a no frills racer for the most part, there being no pronounced gimmick, no strange or unusual vehicles or tracks, and not even a turbo boost, the kind of racing game that doesn’t sound like it could compete with anything in the present. Developer Namco though still had a trick up its sleeve and a very simple one too. R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 is still worth returning to all these years later simply because the racing and tracks are simply that good.
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4’s driving balances the degree of speed and control featured in its races well. You don’t want to be hitting other racers, not because there will be some impressive crash, but because the bump will diminish your speed a bit and you definitely want to maintain your max speed if you want to pull ahead of cars in front of you. You don’t want to slam into barriers not because of a fear of a wreck, but because the race cars featured here, despite taking that hit well, will need some time to recover and the opposing racers won’t be so sloppy. Watching the map and anticipating the turns ahead is crucial in this racing game as a result, because when it comes time to take that turn, that’s where your maneuvering ability is really tested. The game features two broad types of vehicles, Drift and Grip. Drift is definitely the easier to get to grips with funnily enough, the idea behind it being you need to release the acceleration for half a second before hitting the gas to slide around a corner and keep a good deal of your speed. You can drift too much if you don’t know how to orient yourself after a slide and some turns can even be better handled without drifting, getting a good sense for the space and situations for this crucial skill allowing a player to notice their own progress quite well. Going from a few collisions from bad judgment calls or sloppy drifts to being a speed demon sliding cleanly around the course is exciting even after you’ve gone from learning a course to being comfortable with it, R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 knowing when to include skill checks in its turns while not just turning things into a constant sequence of drifts.
The Grip method of handling a car though is not as quick to learn but noticeably has its advantages. Grip cars are better at hugging the inside of a turn and with some smart use of the acceleration you can better handle some tighter parts of the track. R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 offers eight unique race tracks, but it’s easy to spot there are times on most courses where one type of handling has the advantage without necessarily dooming the other to a rough time. Both Grip and Drift can conquer a course and it’s hard to argue with the greater consistency and thrill found in a Drift vehicle, but some experimentation can prove rewarding if you aim to tackle single race challenges like the Time Trials, 2 player multiplayer, or the Extra Trials you unlock through the game’s Grand Prix.
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4’s main single-player content is the Real Racing Roots ’99 Grand Prix. Made up of eight races, this essentially just a way to play the eight available courses in order, but this tournament mode does have some more thought put into it than just stringing regular races together. The first and most apparent element is the inclusion of racing teams. R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 has four racing teams based on old Namco arcade properties, and while it may be tempting to play the one based on Pac-Man or Dig Dug based on where your nostalgia lies, the racing teams actually determine the game’s difficulty and what small story unfolds. While your racer is always an unnamed new racing ace joining the team for the tournament, Racing Team Solvalou (based on Xevious) is the game’s Hard mode and their story reflects it with a team manager who first coldly expects perfection from you but begins to fear for your safety as he worries you’ll push yourself too far while the game’s Easy mode, RC Micro Mouse Mappy, has the friendlier Sophie Chevalier heading up the racing team and going from barely understanding motorsports to developing a passion for it based on your example. If you do decide to tackle something like Dig Racing Team who serves as the ultimate challenge with the highest difficulty of the bunch, you can definitely feel the rise in computer racer competence.
You won’t notice major errors from other racers on Easy mode, but you’ll definitely need to be adept at your chosen style and know the tracks if you want to compete against the top competitors, although there is a bit of mercy in the Grand Prix design. You are able to retry any race up to three times, there is a chance to save progress after the 2nd, 4th, and 7th race, and depending on which Heat you’re in, you might not even need to get first place. The first two races only require 3rd or higher and the second heat’s two races ask for 2nd or better, the final four races demanding that 1st place finish but you’ll also steadily get better cars over the course of the Grand Prix as well that are faster but even limited intentionally at times since the upcoming tracks might have winding turns that are tough to take if the top speed is too high. You should never find yourself resenting your vehicle, the Grand Prix truly a skill test, although R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 featuring 321 race cars to unlock primarily by just constantly replaying this mode feels like a very unusual imbalance of content breadth to unlock requirements. As four tournaments to test your skills with however many retries it takes to learn the roads it feels like a successful single player component and the unlockable Extra Trials also give you four one on one races with different car types for a final little test of how far you’ve come.
The game featuring only eight tracks may mean it’s not a game you come back to for its variety on offer, but they are all quite distinct from each other in feel if not always in appearance. Racing on a mountainside with small lanes and barriers punishing for you not taking turns close definitely provides a different challenge over the many wide streets of a glittering city at night where you can test out how long you can hold a drift. Some courses have little off-road shortcuts on sidewalks while others will slow you down for daring to stray from pavement, and the electronic backing music can prove both a good fit for high speeds or a more calming beat for those straightaways when you’re just trying to build up speed. While some racing games can feel like they have stagnant parts of the course, the fact you will often need to recover some speed even after a good drift leads to R4: Ridge Racer Type 4’s courses not having much wasted space, it feasible you can catch up to the race ahead of you just on a flat road but you’ll never get too long of a break from the turns that put your skills to the test. The final track of The Real Racing Roots ’99 Grand Prix even looks pretty basic on its surface, but the slightly bent out of shape oval layout contains frequent tests of whether your should try drifting or not with one turn near the end especially devastating if you don’t approach it at the right speed to avoid hitting the walls or going on rough terrain. A course may not stand out on theming alone here, but you can bet even the most standard of city roads will require precision if you want to clear the tougher races and as a result, the small set of 8 tracks becomes well known for their shape and those moments that really test your racing acumen.
THE VERDICT: R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 may not be breaking the mold with its racing design, but it doesn’t need to in order to provide quality high speed entertainment. A good accompanying soundtrack, satisfying drift mechanics, and race tracks built to emphasize precision so every stretch of road was placed with clear intention makes mastering the driving a worthwhile and fun process. Having only 8 tracks and few extra modes does still feel like it holds things back from truly being excellent, the huge range of 321 unlockable cars not a huge motivator to replay things especially since those vehicles aren’t that diverse in design. However, the four racing teams in the Grand Prix provide nice extra touches so it’s not just a range of difficulties to overcome ensuring there’s a good amount of quality racing to be had before you even dip into multiplayer to keep things going.
And so, I give R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 for PlayStation…
A GOOD rating. Some nice music, a little personality in the story, and some throwback arcade references are not the kind of features that will get someone to dig up an old racing game, but playing so well does ensure R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 isn’t just a single step in a large franchise’s history. It may not have a marquee feature, but its racing is tuned well to be tested by the eight tracks it does offer, and while the quantity of content does feel like you’re going to run out of game before you were done appreciating it, each course works well to ensure the action is always involved. The lower difficulties certainly aren’t as demanding of course, but getting a feel for things like how to drift when racing at a certain speed means even after you’ve come to know a course’s layout well, there can still be a dynamic element to tackling it on a different difficulty. You may not be incentivized to bump other racers, but blocking a car that’s coming up on you with your bumper slows them down is certainly satisfying while needing to make sure you don’t hit them when overtaking them can also change how you handle stretches of the track. A lot of what makes R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 work feels like the kind of common sense racing game design choices you should make but the execution helps such things feel apparent, the player likely to watch that speedometer closely because optimizing is your key to success in the harder Grand Prix races and yet it doesn’t feel like you need to achieve perfection so clearing all four stories feels attainable despite their difficulty.
The Ridge Racer series has plenty of entries and it can be hard for an entry that tries to be a pretty straightforward racing video game to stand out in it. It may have lost the veneer of newness that leads to a game like this sometimes being given incredibly high review scores in its time, but R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 does have a timeless quality, and that is, appropriately, it’s quality. It’s not flashy, it’s not even necessarily that unique, but thought was put into how the driving relates to the courses and the game gives you room to learn and grow through its retry system. If you want to sit down and just play a good normal racing game, it may involve locating a 25 year old PS1 game, but R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 can give you just what you’re looking for.