Rave Racer is the third entry in the Ridge Racer series and was first released into arcades by Namco in 1995. Cabinets had a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals, and a gear stick, but thankfully you can play the game with auto gears too. Manual gears will give you an edge, though.

Rave Racer cabinets came as either a single-wheel upright, or a twin-wheel duo. With duos, two-player racers were immediately possible. Linking up four duo cabinets could support a maximum of eight players.

Rave Racer – like its predecessor, Ridge Racer 2 – also supports connections over LAN, so multiplayer races are possible without having to have multiple arcade machines positioned next to each other. As far as I can tell, though, this has not been implemented in emulators yet, so unfortunately no dream online games of Rave Racer in MAME. Yet.

Calling Rave Racer a ‘hidden gem’ would be stretching it, because it was very popular at the time of release, but… Looking at it now: it’s not so well-known. In fact, it’s more or less been forgotten by most people. Except for those who got to play it in arcades back in the day, or those who are still playing it now.

To get anywhere in Rave Racer you must avoid hitting the course sides, or other cars. Doing so will always slow you down and is very frustrating. The only way to counter this is to turn very carefully, or set up the steering with analogue controls.

If you’ve never played Rave Racer before: you should probably rectify that, because it is one of the best racing games ever made. It’s got great graphics and sound, and outstanding pedal-to-the-metal gameplay, and it is also a tiny bit cheeky with its dancing girls and their pronounced boobas… 🙂

It’s also extremely challenging. Which is also appealing. Rave Racer is an unsung hero in the pantheon of arcade racing games.

More: Rave Racer on Wikipedia