Namco Bandai wanted us to know that a new Ridge Racer game was coming for the PlayStation Vita, but they didn’t have any gameplay ready. Instead, they brought something really cool. I’d call it an interactive tease, if anything.
This ‘tease’ was running on the Vita. It was like one of Ridge Racer‘s fancy introduction movies, complete with cool music and sexy car shots. I was watching this video with headphones on when I noticed a finger come in front of my face and onto the Vita’s screen. It turns out this finger was the index finger of the right hand of the Ridge Racer audio man himself, Hiroshi Okubo.
The guy famous for all the great Ridge Racer music came from Japan to show off his work in this fancy intro. The music and graphics became interactive with all of the Vita’s new control types. Touching and sliding on the front screen slowed down the music and the visuals like a DJ’s record stop. Tapping on the back screen created a musical delay and a change in the graphics. All the buttons had changed the audio and visuals in some fashion.
I was told that this was just a taste of what the game will sound and look like. The visuals had a cool style, with whisps of color streaming past shiny cars, and objects switching to wireframes in slow motion. There were no available details on the actual game other than Namco Bandai is working on one, and that we could expect more drifting and some new gameplay features. Look for more closer to system launch.
