Ridge Racer DS Review

Ridge Racer DS is more or less an expanded port of Ridge Racer 64 for the Nintendo 64. It takes the same basic gameplay elements, tracks and car model designs and has them more fine tuned in certain aspects. It’s one of two racing games for the Nintendo DS, along with Asphalt Urban GT. Both have their unique elements, but how does Ridge Racer DS stack between them? Is it a must have racing game for all lovers of the genre and handheld, or was it a flop due to the fact that it’s nothing more than an upgraded port? The game has its things to do, but are they worth it?

Upon first firing up Ridge Racer on your Nintendo DS, you will be taken through a rather lengthy and cumbersome set of loading screens. I don’t really understand the reason for this, as you are not able to skip through anything by hitting any buttons or using the touch screen stylus. Nevertheless, once you finally get into the actual game, you are greeted with a cool sounding racing game theme and the beginning menu. It is here that you create a profile for yourself out of the three slots that are available and choose a name. After this, you are taken to the actual menu for the game that allows you to go through a small number of options. You can either choose a Quick Race which is self explanatory, Grand Prix, Car Attack or Options. Obviously the main part of the game is the Grand Prix, but if you wish to get used to the game’s controls first, Quick Race is also a fine choice.

Now when it comes to learning how to control this game, that may depend on your definition of “learn”. If by learning in this game you think of actually knowing how to control your car, then that will be virtually immediately. You can use the D-Pad to steer and the A button to accelerate, nothing too tough there. However, if by learning how to play the game in terms of mastering how to drive through the various courses, that might be a totally different story altogether. But just to make things easier for you guys, the cars in general are easy to learn to control, but driving well might take a lot of practice. So about 15 minutes or so maximum should allow you to learn the ease of the controls, just not the other complex parts.

As mentioned before, Ridge Racer DS is an upgraded port of the Nintendo 64 iteration. How the game looks is very much reminiscent of that. If you’re looking for a DS racing game that looks absolutely fantastic in the graphics department, you will as might as well turn away from this game right now.

Now that doesn’t mean the graphics in this game are truly sub-par, that is far from the truth. But you can very much tell this is an upgraded port because the whole presentation displayed looks like something the N64 would very much punch out. You have your “blurred” and “blocky” effects, and that is rather unfortunate because based on some of the graphics we are seeing in future DS titles, Ridge Racer could’ve easily looked way better than it does.

Car models do look very nice, and each one has their own distinguishing body builds, so that is definitely a plus. You can customize the color scheme of each one as well before your race actually starts so that too is a positive. Pretty much all the primary colors and various blends are available for your choosing. There are actually a few cool unlockables that have their design dedicated to the likenesses of Donkey Kong and Princess Peach. Obviously showing Nintendo’s involvement in the development of it.

The problem likes in the actual track environments. The problem’s source is that there are too few tracks to race through. There are over 20 Grand Prix races, but the problem with that is each track gets repeating too many times. The only differences in them lie in the fact that a different path is opened up to make the path of the laps a little different, but that really just wasn’t enough. There are a few nice natural features that you will encounter in some of the tracks. The waterfall, the cacti, and various other features of desert can be truly eye catching. But other than that, there isn’t much else that will make you impressed. This is a port of the N64 game, and the graphics were brought in to emulate just that.

To make it even less interesting, there are no weather effects on the tracks. There will never be any rain, snow, natural disasters…..or anything for that matter. It’s a clear, sunny day in each race, and it’s basically a run of over 20 Grand Prix races that look no different in terms of special effects.

However, the most solid aspect of Ridge Racer’s graphics is the great frame rate. While the game is indeed for a handheld, sometimes you can almost feel how fast the game is going. When you get near the end of the game and unlock the fastest cars, you will be driving at speeds close to the level of 200 mph. At the beginning of the game, you’re looking at cars no faster than 130 mph, but with the evolution of the car speeds as you unlock them, you can definitely begin to notice a change in the speed of the game. The frame rate never drops or lags, and that is a definite plus. It most certainly doesn’t make up for all the easily correctable shortcomings, but having one of the first racers on the DS fly like this is really awesome.

All in all, the graphics aren’t great, but they certainly aren’t bad either. They are more or less on the good scale. The car models are very much diverse, especially in how each are built and you can change their color to your heart’s desire. But the terrible lack of diverse environments in the tracks you’ll be racing with (even with the great frame rate), just simply doesn’t do enough to impress.