Ridge Racer has come a long way since the first arcade game was released over 20 years ago. Sadly, for a while now a lot of it has been downhill.
A champion of the earlier PlayStation eras, the game’s been on a sharp decline since its infamous appearance at Sony’s 2006 E3 appearance, culminating in the “release” of Ridge Racer Driftopia in 2013.
A free-to-play racing game for the PC, made by the same guys who made FlatOut, it’s been a disaster, most obviously because it will have taken this post to remind you the game even existed.
There was an interesting feature with the game’s developers, Bugbear, a few months back in Edge, where they basically shrug their shoulders, place a lot of the blame at Namco Bandai’s feet and get on with making awesome games again.
Eurogamer reports that the game – which has never left beta – will have its servers shutdown on August 15, with no word on its future except “All the feedbacks will be taken into account for the upcoming projects.”
So yeah, it’s dead then. Which is well-deserved, since its free-to-play model involved paying to repair the damage your car sustained in races.
Bandai Namco to shut down F2P Ridge Racer Driftopia servers [Eurogamer]
Comments
8 responses to “The Worst Ridge Racer Game Is Basically Dead”
Reading the title, “So all Ridge Racer games are dead?”
Nope. Just the worst one, apparently.
Ah, one of my favourite E3s. A good childhood memory to be sure. The birth of many a meme and an over-excited boyish squeal.
Yeah, it’s kinda saddening not seeing any of the old wackiness of E3s gone by present this year. 🙁
They could of just ya know taken out the awful pay to repair shit and worked out a new way to make money from it, i’ve heard its not bad except for that whole thing (which nearly makes it unplayable without paying a lot of money)
My favourite was Type-4, followed by the first PSP ridge racer..
I thought the Ridge Racer series started to die with Ridge Racer 5 on the PS2. Prior to then with Rage Racer and Type 4 it was all going extremely well. WTF happened?
Let’s all take a moment, bow our heads, in rememberance of…
rrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDGGGEE RRAACCEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!