PS3 Ridge Racer 7 at E3
Sounds dashing.
Ever since the original PlayStation, Ridge Racer's been ever-present at the launch of new Sony console platforms - and it sounds like PlayStation 3 will be no exception, following this week's announcement that Ridge Racer 7 is in development.
RR7 will also appear at E3, perhaps in playable form although certainly as a trailer, Namco said.
Namco's Hideo Teramoto and Masaya Koyabashi, both Ridge Racer veterans, are in charge of the project which promises to bring the nitrous system introduced in Ridge Racer PSP and refined in Ridge Racer 6 on Xbox 360 to PS3.
RR7 will also incorporate 14-player online racing, and speaking in Japan this week Teramoto also hinted at something akin to co-op play.
Players will also be able to customise cars and compare them with friends' online, while the single-player game will consist of more than 160 races, Time Attack and Single Race modes. Hiroshi Okubuo will take charge of the game's soundtrack.
Fans to whom names like Okubuo and Kobayashi resound will also be pleased to learn that series mainstay Reiko Nagase, the lady who appears in the trailers and intro movies, will be returning for the series' seventh outing.
There's no word on a launch date for RR7, but Ridge Racer has been a mainstay of PlayStation launch campaigns since 1994 - so it would be unsurprising to see it lining up alongside the system this November.
It might sound like a quick turnaround, but then so did Ridge Racer 6's target for Xbox 360 launch, and in the end critics acclaimed not only its slick presentation but also its surprising and initially unapparent depth.