Ridge Racer (1993 video game)
1993 racing video game
Ridge Racer is a 1993 racing video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. It is the first installment in Namco's Ridge Racer series. It was released initially on the Namco System 22 arcade system board and ported to the PlayStation home console in 1994. Ridge Racer was notable for being the first arcade video game with 3D texture-mapped graphics, with its System 22 hardware capable of texture mapping and Gouraud shading.
Development took eight months, and the game is based on a trend among Japanese car enthusiasts, which involves racing on mountain roads while drifting around corners. The first home version was released in Japan in 1994 as a launch title for the PlayStation; the versions for North America and Europe were released in 1995, also as a launch title for both regions. While an accurate conversion, its frame rate was halved to 30 per second (25 for PAL) due to PlayStation hardware limitations. Ridge Racer played a major role in establishing the new system and gave it an early edge over its nearest competitor, the Sega Saturn; it was considered a rival to Sega's Daytona USA.
Ridge Racer received critical acclaim; journalists praised its 3D texture-mapped graphics, audio, drifting mechanics, and arcade racing gameplay, although some were critical of the lack of strong artificial intelligence and a multiplayer mode. It has retrospectively been considered one of the greatest video games of all time. It was followed by an arcade update in 1994, Ridge Racer 2, and a fully-fledged sequel, Rave Racer, in 1995; the PlayStation received a separate sequel, Ridge Racer Revolution, released in 1995 in Japan, and in 1996 in North America and PAL regions.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15087581. None of the 6 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ridge Racer (1993 video game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.