Arcade Archives Ridge Racer

Genre: Arcade Racing

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Ridge Racer is the first of a series of games created for the “Arcade Archives 2” series on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2, releasing alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025, but meanwhile at the same time the original Nintendo Switch also received a version of the game in the original Arcade Archives product line. I’ll detail the differences farther down, but to start with let’s look at the Nintendo Switch release of the game.

Ridge Racer is an Arcade-style Racing game originally released in arcades in 1993, marking the first entry in what would become a long-running game series. While the series is often seen as being tied to the PlayStation franchise after this game’s release on the original PlayStation in 1995 at launch, numerous entries in the franchise have made it onto Nintendo platforms, starting with Ridge Racer 64 in 2000.

While the original Ridge Racer is unquestionably iconic, with a great sense of style and solid gameplay mechanics, it comes with a major problem – being a relatively early polygonal Racing game, it is extremely light on content, with only one racing venue (with one variation for its highest difficulty mode), without even the PlayStation release’s mirrored tracks to add even a little extra content, and without any sort of multiplayer. While that may have been fine for one-shot plays in the arcade, as a home game it means you’ll blast through everything this game has to offer extremely quickly.

This brings us to the other issue with this release – the price. At $15, the Arcade Archives release of Ridge Racer is absurdly pricey for a game that is over 30 years old and so lacking in content or features.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both Japanese and English versions of the game, in both its SD ROM and DX ROM formats. In addition, there are various display options, sound options, button mapping, online leaderboards, and save states.

Overall, Ridge Racer is an absolutely fantastic Arcade-style Racing game… for maybe a half hour. After that, you’ll find yourself wondering, “is that it?” and realizing that you could have put the $15 this game costs towards a more modern Racing game that has more to offer. It’s a shame that such a legendary game would ultimately be undone by an inflated price tag and a lack of content.

tl;dr – Ridge Racer is an incredible, iconic Arcade-style Racing game, but it’s woefully lacking content, has no multiplayer, and at $15 for a game that’s over 30 years old it seems horribly overpriced. This is a truly great game, but there just isn’t enough here to justify the price.

Grade: C-

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Arcade Archives 2 Ridge Racer

Genre: Arcade Racing

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

When the Arcade Archives series jumped to Nintendo Switch 2, it did so with a “2” added to the title, and an extra $2 added to the price tag over the cost of the Nintendo Switch release. An while these games don’t have a “Nintendo Switch 2 Edition” upgrade, players who purchased the Nintendo Switch release of the game first will be able to buy the Arcade Archives 2 release on Nintendo Switch 2 discounted to only $3, making this effectively a $3 upgrade. So the question is, what do you get for that $3?

As far as I can tell, not much. I didn’t notice any difference in resolution or framerates, and the only extra feature I saw was a new Time Attack mode where players try to complete the entire game in as short a time as possible.

Beyond this, the only difference I noticed was slightly-improved loading times. On Nintendo Switch, the game takes 10 seconds to load to the main menu and 3 seconds to start the game, while on Nintendo Switch 2, those times are cut to 7 seconds and 1 second.

Better? Sure. But $2-$3 better? Nuh-uh. If you’re trying to decide whether to get the original Arcade Archives release or the Arcade Archives 2 release, I’d honestly say to save yourself a few bucks and get the original Arcade Archives version… and that’s if you think this overpriced game is even worth it at that price.

tl;dr – Ridge Racer is an incredible, iconic Arcade-style Racing game, but it’s woefully lacking content, has no multiplayer, and at $15 for a game that’s over 30 years old it seems horribly overpriced. This is a truly great game, but there just isn’t enough here to justify the price.

Grade: C-

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