Namco’s Ridge Racer series is turning 18 years old in 2011. What will it do with its new adult freedoms? Get a new developer and what appears to be plenty of destruction, as seen in the new Ridge Racer Unbounded.
Put your seatbelts on, Ridge Racer fans, for developer Bugbear Entertainment is taking the wheel of the arcadey racing game series, steering it in a “whole new direction by adding a punishing dose of destruction.” Unbounded will “take the action off the circuits and into the streets for one of the most action-packed and destructive racing games ever seen,” according to publisher Namco Bandai.
The game’s debut trailer shows Ridge Racer mascot Reiko Nagase engaging in said destruction, which seems a little malicious. Reiko just have finally snapped.
Bugbear, if that doesn’t ring a bell, is the Finnish developer behind the FlatOut series, known for its racing meets destruction gameplay. Ridge Racer Unbounded is coming to the Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 sometime in 2012.
Azoshi
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 11:51 AMAnother great game series wrecked.
Typical.
roxahris
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 5:50 PMConsidering the content of the video, I’d say that is a HORRIBLE pun.
Taylor
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 8:34 PMFor me this is the first time I’ve ever been interested in a Ridge Racer title. I’ve always found them to be pretty boring.
oggob
Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 11:59 AMThis is not an attack on you, but your response is the perfect reason why this looks shit.
Some people find Ridge Racer boring, while others find it one of the best Arcade racers around and it just shows that the direction they are taking with the game, certainly looks to be alienating those fans who have got them to 7 console games and many portable games in the first place.
Keyser
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 1:14 PMNever mind the terrible-looking trailer… UNBOUNDED?
Surely this trailer and the name are a joke, and not a gut reaction to EA’s Shift 2: Unleashed. They could have at least called it Ridge Racer: Unleashededer, or Ridge Racer: Redemptioned, maybe even Ridge Racer: Unchartened.All those options would have sounded better than Unbounded.
Mr Waffle
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 3:25 PMBefore release:
Namco executive: “the Japanese market is stagnant, we need to inject foreign blood into our development if we want to capture the western market!”
Release:
(half-assed game sells poorly, company shares take a dive)
After release:
Namco executive: “damn foreigners! Foreign and Japanese development culture doesn’t mix (or some other excuse that puts the blame on foreigners and excuses the Japanese side of the deal)!”
Replace “Namco” with “Square-Enix”, “Capcom”, “Bandai-Namco”, etc…
Michael Barnes
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 4:05 PMNo, NO, NOOOOOOOOOO!
Its gone all “gangster” and “underground” style!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I loved the arcade Japanese circuits with all their scenery and electro music.
Need for Speed moved OUT of the cruddy “gangster” thing for a reason!
BugBear, what have you done!?
Thank god we can ignore this monstrosity, as the real developers are working on Ridge Racer 3DS which looks pretty great so far.
Grandmaster B-Funk
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 5:25 PMit seems that most racing games are going the more arcadey route, which i like, i mean, normal racing games are fun and all, but stuff like destruction is what is gonna hook me, not realistic handling or some shit, still to this day burnout 3 is my favorite racing game ever made
Random
Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 5:45 PMerr… Ridge Racer is probably the single most UNrealistic racing series there is – you can’t get any more arcadey – if anything, this is arguably the most realistic the series has ever been :-/
Vapor
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 8:40 PMI won’t lie. I’m just happy to see Reiko again, even if she has been massively tarted up.
Dominic Bui
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 11:50 PMhoney, i cant help it notice but theres a bear in my ridge racer…
Jeff Kartono
Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 3:55 AMThe taxi driver didn’t survive.
Kerber
Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 7:29 AMNo thanks. If your going to add “destruction” to an old franchise then reviving destruction derby would have been my first choice.
What happened to the bright color, happy racers, disco music & blue sky.
Sorry Bugbear, adding brown, new york “street”, hip hop music, and a badly animated woman has been done before. It seams less like “whole new direction” and more like “cloning”.
Zico
Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 9:11 AMLol. Western developer + Japanese content= add more explosions and dodgy hiphop/rap soundtrack (pretty sure it started off with final fight on ps2)
Random
Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 5:54 PMlooks like just another western developer completely misunderstanding what makes a japanese franchise popular in the first place…
Final Fight, Bionic Commando, Silent Hill, Front Mission, now this… western development is where Japanese franchises go to die.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that its exactly the same lack of understanding and respect for the source material that results in all those shitty game movies coming out of hollywood?
thedragoness
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 8:48 AMThat ain’t Reiko, the hair’s all wrong. If it’s not her then what’s the story? Could it be something like a racer causing destruction on the underground racing scene and Reiko enters to put a stop to it?