Namco loves you!

[Ginkaze]

Hi!

I wondered why no one ever write about Namco here. Namco loves it's fans and filles it's games with cross-references, so everyone will find one from time to time. Here are some easier to find easter eggs - releated to the 1st Ridge Racer (PSX):

This Video will help me to explain them




No.1: listen to the first song "Ridge Racer", which starts at 0:55 (a few seconds will be enough). Then hear the music in this mini-game from Tales of Phantasia, where you have to race a guy in a town:




No.2: and once again music. Jump to 3:33, when the track "Rare Hero" starts to play - a song, that very often came back in the Ridge-Racer-Series in newer remixes. This track is already a remix of the music of the cutescenes of the original Pac-Man:



Please jump to 2:30 to hear it.

No.3: Go back to the footage of Ridge Racer at 4:53. you'll see how the gamer reaches the beach in the 2nd lap of the 2nd race. At this point it already turned night and some of the rooms in the hotel on the right have their lights on. I needed the smooth-filter of the PS2 to finally see it: this lights draw the face of the comic Pac-Man, you can see on the original arcade-mashines for example.


These were a few and (partial) easy to find easter eggs only for the 1st Ridge Racer. It only scratches on the surface of Namco's hidden treasures for fans. One more example without "Riiiiiiidge Racer!"? No problem - Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of a New World:



I think, I don't have to explain it

Originally I wanted to show you something I found years ago in Ridge Racer 7: sometimes, when you left the 2nd tunnel of the "Mist Falls"-course, your can see a swarm of black, rotating squares, flying over the track instead of the bird-swarm. Long time I thought, it was a glitch, but than I saw footage of a progressed game of Xevious, which is in Ridge Racer 7 as a boot-mini-game (yeah, I know - I just don't like to play shooters, okay?). And then there were these black, rotating squares, flying over a jungle like in "Mist Falls". I tried to reproduce their apperance in Ridge Racer 7, but i failed and didn't find any footage of the squares in RR7 on YouTube (eventually they were patched away with the 3D-licence patch). But here are the squares I talked about in Xevious (at 2:48):




P.S.: I just noticed, that all 4 Ridge Racer games for the PSX were released in Japan on "ichi ni san" or "one two three" in english. "Ichi ni san" plays with the release-date of the 1st PlayStation in Japan on 12/3/1994. Ridge Racer came on the same day as the PSX on 12/3/1994, Ridge Racer Revolution 12/3/1995, Rage Racer 12/3/1996 and Ridge Racer Type 4 12/3/1998. If I recall it correctly, SCEJ awards the most successful PlayStation-games of the year every year on "ichi ni san".

Wikipedia: Ridge Racer (series)