The Last Ridge Racer | Hacker News Reader

The Last Ridge Racer

arcadeblogger.com

149 pointszdw35 comments

In 1993 I had my 11th birthday party at a bowling alley and they had a Ridge Racer cabinet. Seeing those graphics completely rearranged my molecules. I had no idea that a video game could look so realistic.

I just remember the ps1 version. It was quite a feat to get the black car :)

My memories of this are also from playing it on the original PlayStation. When I saw the article headline I immediately heard the "Ridge Raaacer" voice in my head, it's been 20 years and I still remember it clearly.

Oh wow what a flood of memories from a PlayStation announcement.

Strike the weak spot for MASSIVE DAMAGE

Same for me, have driven millions of miles knowing every turn, tips and even exploiting corner cases (over speed after special drift moves). Was 1000% fun.

I see we’ve crossed the PlayStation nostalgia event horizon, just as we crossed the NES and SNES ones before.

That horizon passed a while ago. PS2 nostalgia is definitely a thing, and the Xbox 360 turned 17 today meaning kids that grew up with that are adults.

The console wars of the 90s-10s were insane, albeit tepid compared to the various vying powers of 80s. Crazy that modern hardware can emulate all that came before, but doesn't out of legal reasons.

And the 2600 before that.

With that one, I remember using the rotary controller to catch bombs in buckets of water. I had to defocus my eyes to watch the entire screen at once. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaboom!_(video_game)

Yeah that’s at the edge of my memory. I recall a really cool space game that had planet landings too. To pick up fuel tanks.

Solaris, maybe.

Gorf as cartridge on C4?

That's it!

Defeating the black and the white car is probably my greatest video game achievement (though that's not saying much0. Probably wouldn't have been possible without the twisty controller.

That's what i keep saying to my children. "You have no idea how difficult a game can be if you haven't wasted weeks as a child, trying to get the black and white car in ridge racer."

Oh wow, I had one too and completely forgot about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeGcon

I remember the Ridge Racer installation at Codona's in Aberdeen, from when I was part of a team that ran a prototype networked computer games cafe on the other side of the burger bar. I might if I dig around still have some video of people playing it from a promo reel I shot!

Please do share it with the arcade blogger

If I find it I will.

I played on this in Blackpool when younger! Brings back some amazing memories, but think it was at Mr B's, not the Pleasure Beach?

What they did to that poor Full Scale Ridge Racer was criminal. There's absolutely no reason someone would claim preservation, but grab the mazda and let the videogame parts to rot, other than pure malice.

Well, this is a mint 93 Miata body. In a few years, it will be more valuable than the Holy Grail

> Don’t expect to see this in MAME any time soon. For now this is proprietory emulation that will eventually be made public when the time is right.

What's the betting that this emulation code will instead rot in the digital equivalent of a garage somewhere?

Incorrect sir. The whole point of wanting to save this machine, and emulate the code is so that it will 100% be made public. As the article states, this will happen when the time is right.

Like the first guy?

What you have to know about gaming collectors is they are all insane. Some more than others. In this story you have at least 3 people with some problems. Greed, allure of exclusivity, compulsive hoarding, scamming, predatory speculation, its all there.

I feel that often people start projects like this with the best of intentions, life gets in the way, and then the "time" is never "right". It would be better to share incomplete things early to reduce this risk.

But what is the downside to sharing the code in an incomplete state, in case the folks working on emulation cease their work? The world is full of projects that never get "finished."

That's an honest question, not a rhetorical one.

I would think because this whole thing occurred literally weeks ago.

I love using the left 40% of my display to show an image of a car while the actual blog post now requires more scrolling and looks 'meatier'.

Awful UX.

It would require same amount of scrolling, you can't have lines that long to keep it easily readable anyway.

What I don't like it's alighned to right, I prefer to read centered text, but it's their website, so whatever, if I don't like it I can just close it (or could try to block picture element through UBO).

edit: tried to block all elements on the left including header, but it's still aligned to right just leaving big dark left column

It also seems to do some shenanigans that show a history of 4 of the same page (I think) and require hitting back 4 times to get back to HN

Not to state the bleedin' obvious, but I will - the point of the UX is that the site adapts to the device being used. And it adapts well. The large image on the left in desktop mode is certainly different, but I like the execution personally.

Sounds like you're getting tablet layout on mobile?

That's when you're glad you're running a firefox variant and hit "Ctrl+Alt+R" to switch to reader view.

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