11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
All Too Familiar
Date of Review: Mar 11, 2007
The Bottom Line: Given a choice between a DS or a PSP Ridge Racer title, go for the PSP version. Ridge Racer DS is nothing more than a port with touchscreen support.
When you fire up the Ridge Racer DS game card, you can't help but get the feeling like you've played this game before. Chances are, if you've played Ridge Racer 64 back in 2000, then you're right. Ridge Racer Ds is basically a straight port of Ridge Racer 64, save for some "unique" elements that are only found on the DS. While having a portable version of Ridge Racer 64 is nice, it would have been great to recieve new content as we saw in Super Mario 64 DS. As it stands, it's a decent racing game for the handheld, but never feels like a whole-hearted effort was made into bringing a Ridge Racer on the Nintendo DS as it was for the PSP.
The "new" elements to Ridge Racer DS is where the controls are concerned. You can take the standard D-pad control approach, or go for the touch screen controls. Honestly, I don't even know why Namco even bothered to include touch-screen controls, because the control method just isn't suitable for a fast-driving arcade game. It's like trying to play Burnout 3 with an Atari 2600 joystick: sure, it's possible, but it just isn't practical.
Graphically, the game looks a bit worse than the N64 version, due to the lack of texture smoothing, but it's still not that bad of a game to look at on the handheld. The framerate stays smooth, and the sense of speed is pretty great (at least in the later cars). The sound is nearly identical on the DS as it was on the N64, music and all. The only difference is the sampling quality, which is a bit lower on the handheld.
In the end, what we have is a port of a four-year old N64 game that survies the transition pretty well to the Nintendo DS. But if you're expecting any new content, like courses and cars, well, don't. The only thing new is some odd touch-controls that really don't improve the game, and prove that driving with a stylus is a bad idea. If you have a Ridge Racer fix, and all you have is a DS, this wouldn't be bad to pick up used for about $10. But if you also own a PSP, you're much better off picking up the superior Ridge Racer, as it was actually built from the ground up for the system.
Written By Shaun McCracken
