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First of all, let me say that this version of Rage Racer is for the Japanese Playstation. I doubt that Namco will be changing it too much, but look at what they did to the U.S. version of Tekken 2.
Another important note: even though this is a Japanese game, nearly all of it is in English. (this is because, if you can believe it, Japanese consumers tend to think that English language looks cool on their products and is a sign of quality. Don't believe me? Go to Japan and see for yourself.) Anyway, the text is all in English unless otherwise noted.
The LONG Review:
Buy this game. Even if you don't like racing games normally, buy it. For those of you who want a little more detail, I humbly offer the following. . . The game starts out with a very impressive FMV intro that gets one pumped to play this game. It shows the track to some detail, and the four car manufacturers, plus an extremely impressive rendered Japanese girl marvelling at the driver's (your?) skill and overall manliness. You simply have to see the detail of the girl to understand. When this ends, you are sent to the main screen where the background is the new "Rage Racer' logo on black. When you push Start, the screen will display four options: Grand Prix, Time Attack, Save/Load, and Option.
Option: Here a player can view trophies (about which I will go into more detail later), set up the controller under Key Configuration (of course it supports the NeGcon!), change the BGM and sound effect volume, play the game songs while watching the cars cruise leisurely down the track, or adjust the screen centreing. You can, of course, also Exit.
Save/Load: The player can manage savegame files here (duh!). There are three slots available, but bear in mind that each slot represents one space on your Memory Card. The reason for this? You'll see later. From this position you may save or load, so be sure you pick the right option. The pointer defaults on Exit. Each savegame shows your team name (more later) and the insanely long amount of time you have spent playing the game in total. Mine is currently up to 19 hours, 15 minutes, and sixteen seconds. The Japanese message that appears in the top box when you put in a Memory Card (or when you enter the screen if one is already present) basically says "checking Memory Card." Go figure. When the message disappears, the pointer will be moveable. When an option is selected, the message that appears reads "please choose the file to load" and allows you to select from one of the three spaces. The selected one will have a green border. Selecting a file to load will result in the box displaying "Memory Card file loading" or some such. Selecting a file to save to will bring up "Do you wish to save to this slot?" the in-box pointer defaults to "no" (the one on the right), but to choose "yes" all you need to do is to press left on the D-pad. You can go back at any time by pressing the B or Triangle button. Once you load or save, the pointer will again default to Exit.
Time Attack: In this mode, you can play on any track that you have currently reached in Grand Prix mode or GP Mode (??). Now is a good time to point out that the menu screens are all in the Playstation's Hi-Res mode, namely 640x480 pixels. It looks really nice, and makes me wonder just how hard it would have been for Namco to do the entire game in it. There are three menu choices here: Car Select allows you to choose a car for the currently selected track and go to the Time Attack. It will show the same things shown in the Grand Prix mode submenu (more later), plus "Car Stocks," a listing of how many of the 13 available cars you have currently available. Again, this will be explained later. The only options not available here are Engineer Shop and Car Shop. Ranking will allow you to view current records. It's pretty much self-explanatory, and it's all in English. End Time Attack does something, but I can't remember what. Oh well. . . Grand Prix mode is where the action is. When you choose this for the first time (or when there is not an active Grand Prix in progress) it will show you a nice and only slightly cheesy intro wherein an American girl tells you what a "Rage Racer" is. Check out the sexy way she describes Nitro, burning rubber and hot asphalt. In case you're actually Japanese and bought this game in Japan, the screen shows the text version of what the American girl is saying so you can read it too. After that, the main GP menu comes up. It constantly plays a typical Namco in-game song on an endless loop while you are poking around the choices, and it doesn't really irritate too much. From here, you can select the course you want to race with the D-pad, rotate the course with the shoulder buttons, and check out course data and purse amount. The Class selection will allow you to change to another class, provided you have already cleared it. This option is useful for earning money to be used on cars or upgrades, since chances are you can handle the tracks you've already cleared.
WARNING!! Before you go traipsing back and forth in the available classes, know this, grasshopper: Any victories won in the currently active class will be lost forever if you change classes, up or down. If you are currently trying to finish out a class, wait until you have done so before going back to another class. Only change classes if you don't care about losing whatever progress you've made in the current class. Hmm. . .End Grand Prix. . . what does that do? The one you'll probably use the most is Car Select. From here, you canget a good look at the cars you have and their general performance characteristics including current transmission type, grade, manufacturer, car name, and appearance. The car shown slowly rotates in Hi-Res glory, showing off an impressive attention to detail in the car designs. Each car has its own shape, paint colours, and decals. Using one set of shoulder buttons allows you to rotate the car, the other set turns the wheels.
From here, you can choose several different options as well, all of which can be altered as often as you like:
Race Start: begins race with currently selected car and track. Customise: allows you to change certain parameters of the currently selected vehicle. Tire: You can alter the tires on your car to any of five settings, from high grip to high drift (skid). The more grip a tire has, the better it will hold the road (at the expense of being able to effectively control skidding). More drift means better sliding control, at the cost of worse traction. If you're not sure what to choose, set this in the middle. Your choice will have a very noticeable effect on how the car behaves, and the choice will show up on the car in the form of different wheels. Transmission: AT or MT, your choice. I can tell you that from personal experience, a car can achieve better course times with a manual transmission than an automatic. I think MT gives a car a slightly higher top speed, but it is debatable. At the least, it gives drivers more control over RPM and shift points, both of which are very important in this game. Also, some cars do not have an automatic transmission available. All the more reason to learn the MT.
Design: The really fun part of the customisation routine. Four more options are available:
Team Logo: allows you to design your very own bitmap to put on the front of your cars. The mode is pretty straightforward and self-explanatory, so I won't bore you with the details. However, go to the Secrets section of this FAQ/review for information on how to access RGB colour mode. (Note: the bitmap you make for your car will be part of your savegame file, so don't worry about losing it. This is why the file takes up a whole space by itself. Team Name: up to six letters or numbers (again, in English) may be selected. They will be centred across the top of your vehicles' front windshields.
Paint Color: Choose from Body Color or Line Color, and then choose from 18 different hues to paint your car. So far, nobody has heard of an RGB mode for this, but it would be nice. Exit: hmm. . .
Exit: see above.
Exit: see above.
Car Shop: As the name implies, you can spend time looking at the currently available models in Namco's stylish showroom floor. The menu will show your funds under "credit," and the car price under "price" (duh). Depending on how far along you are, and on what cars you have already purchased, there will be any arrangement of cars available. If you find one you like, push the X or I button (NeGcon). If you can afford the car, the message that comes up in Japanese says "You have selected this car for purchase. Is this all right?" (If you cannot afford the car, the Japanese message that comes up says "You can't afford this car right now.") Choose from the Yes or No options that come up. Note: once you have purchased a car, you cannot sell it later. It is yours for the remainder of that Grand Prix. Choose carefully.
Engineer Shop: Another fun part of the game. As long as your car is upgradeable, you can choose to spend some more of your hard-earned winnings to bump it up to the next level. A tune-up will boost all performance specs on the car (except grip, which is controlled by tire selection) enough for your car to be competitive with other cars of its class. However, the car will always retain its basic performance biases--a car with better handling will always handle better than other cars in its grade, but if its acceleration is not good, it will still be relatively low compared to other cars. In other words, at no time does any car become perfect at everything, which is all the more reason to choose your car carefully. When you choose the tune-up option for a specific car, if it can be upgraded the Japanese message that follows reads "You have chosen to tune up this car. Is it all right?" and you will be able to choose Yes or No. If you cannot afford an upgrade, the message will tell! If the car is at its maximum grade, the message will indicate this in Japanese. A car can be upgraded from its current level all the way to grade 5, but it will cost more for each consecutive grade. The pricing is consistent with the purses in the grade you wish the car to be competitive in--it may cost an arm and a leg to upgrade to grade 5, but the purses in Class 5 are correspondingly large. Usually, you can earn enough money to upgrade a car to, say, grade 3 by the time you reach class 3. Note: see Grand Prix Rules for information on how your car grade affects your chances of winning a Trophy.
Course Select: takes you back to the Course Select menu, but you can also do this by pressing Triangle or B. Grand Prix Rules: This is not mentioned in the actual game, but it is very important. The Grand Prix is about really only one thing: winning Trophies. Trophies are not the Rage Racer insignias that you get next to a track once you have places in it, but those things you can see in the Trophies menu under Options on the starting screen. When you complete a class, you can get a Trophy, provided you do the following: 1. Place in all three races.
2.Do so on the First attempt at each track. (hint: the Playstation won't know it if you don't save it.) If you do this correctly, you will know at the victory screen of the last race in the class. When the game counts your winnings to you, the American girl will exclaim "Great! That Trophy's yours!" This will also be saved along with everything else when you save the game. Trophy eligibility is also affected by your car. If your car is currently at a grade higher than the class number, you will not be able to obtain a Trophy with that car. This prevents smarta$$es (like me) from fudging their way through every class, then getting a grade 5 car and absolutely humiliating the competition on, say, class 1. (There's quite a bit of difference in even one step of a car upgrade.) In other words, you must do it honestly. Trophies do not affect your eligibility for completing a class, but they do affect something a bit more exciting. Yes, that's right, it seems that Namco has hidden a secret track in this game, and it also seems that it is only accessible to a driver who has acquired at least one of all of the Gold Trophies in the game (there are eleven). This is as yet unsubstantiated, since no one I know (including me, unfortunately) has completed this Herculean task, but I'm trying to find out for sure. That's why I'm pushing twenty hours on the Memory Card. Enough about the Trophies. Let's move on to the regular rules. You have a limited amount of time to finish each track, although you won't come anywhere near it if you have any skill at all. Don't worry about that. You always start out in dead last place (usually 12th), and your job is to basically pass everybody. Money is only awarded for coming in 3rd or better, but the purse gets a lot better for those who can place second or first. Purse money is different for each track, and no one track always has the maximum purse--it's different in each class. You have three chances to place in all three (or four) races. If you fail to complete the class before all three of your attempts are used up, you will have to start that class over again (but you do get to keep the money you won). Once you have placed in a race, you can go back and re-race it as many times as you like, provided you continue to place each time. Once you have won the last race in that class, you will be sent to the next class with the admonition "get on to the next class!" When you have finished the last class in that Grand Prix, you will be given a nice FMV credit sequence with a cool song to listen to. It shows that nice Assoluto Porsche type from the beginning movie cruising down the road while the credits roll, and you can marvel at the two or three Americans who had any sort of involvement at all in the game (one of them is the American girl voice). After that is over, you are given a new main menu option: Extra GP. Just like the Ridge Racer games, this one lets you drive the courses backwards, and just like the Ridge Racer games, the tracks feel very different that way. The AI on the computer cars is better, too, and some of the class titles are rather amusing. By the way, when you start this mode, you will be starting from scratch. One other thing in Extra GP mode is class 6. This one is called Diable GP, and it is well named. This mode features three new cars, representing the best that the three main car companies in the game have to offer. I call them the Ridiculous cars, for reasons that can only be understood by someone who has played with one of them. These races are not for the timid. They require skill on a level similar to that needed for the Phantom class in Wipeout XL, and just to throw you off, take place on the forward versions of the tracks again.
Now for the gameplay. . .
During the loading of the track, the American girl suggests that the two of you "get it on," and you are albe to choose what song you wish to play from the available choices by pushing left or right on the D-pad. When the race starts, you are given the familiar countdown as the pretty Japanese girl from the intro sashays by holding a sign for the race. (Note: from the start of the countdown to the end of it, you can exit the race without forfeiting a chance.) From there, it gets really good. The graphics are as impressive as anything I have ever seen in a Playstation racing game, only equalled or perhaps surpassed by Wipeout XL. There is a lot of detail to notice, and I suggest you do it when someone else it playing. The light-sourcing is immediately apparent, and the sound effects and overall feel of the game draw you in instantly. The car physics have underwent a major overhaul, in the name of realism. Now, when your vehicle climbs one of the many inclines present in the game, the engine starts losing RPMs, to the point where it will even sound laboured if they get too low. In general, try to keep the RPMs no lower than 4000 or so, and rev in to the redline before shifting up. Car handling is much more sensitive and challenging now, with skids being harder to control and the added danger of losing traction on sustained sharp turns (Of course there are plenty of those in the game). The wonderful rear view mirror from RRRevolution is here also, and the RPM gauge is different for each car--a nice little touch. The engine sounds are also different for each car, which only stands to reason as each car has a different engine in it. The engines even start to sound a bit different when they are upgraded. Car collisions are still a bit unrealistic at times, but they are best avoided anyway (except, of course, for blocking). Some collisions actually have thrown my car backwards, leaving me cursing the offending party and jamming the accelerator. Control is excellent and highly responsive. Of course, I very very strongly recommend the NeGcon or the Mad Catz steering wheel to any serious racing game fan, but they are both about $70, so use the D-pad if you want. I have found the steering to be very well programmed for the NeGcon, and the gas and brakes are both smoothly responsive as well. There is also a very noticeable difference between cars of different types, and different grades. The handling-type cars feel light and quick and always ready to oversteer, and the top speed cars feel solid, slow to turn and very very fast. The tracks make good use of the new physics. Even the "easy" track (the Lakeside course) has plenty of hard areas, from its 90 degree turn at the bottom of a large hill to the hairpin near to the end. These tracks were obviously designed to be learned through lots of repetition, not luck. The driving lines required to thread a high-performance machine through them at speed is very specific at times, and different for different cars. They are truly tracks to be savoured. Now, on to the cars. . .
GNADE
Favouring a balanced performance package, Gnade seems to be the only car company in the game that only manufactures one car. However, there are two other cars in the early classes that are unavailable. Perhpas they are made by Gnade also. Esparanza: appears to be a Nissan Silvia (Japanese 240SX) and the only free lunch in Rage Racer. It starts out mediocre in all respects, but is always competitive on the three regular tracks. An excellent all-around choice.
AGE
Age appears to be vaguely French or European in its design ideas, and favours light, nimble cars. All Age cars handle extremely well, but tend to lose a lot of speed on inclines. They also do not skid well, so brake usage is recommended. Alouette: a LeCar lookalike, this is the cheapest of all the cars at a mere 2600 cp. It starts out at grade 2 with a certifiably lawnmower-like engine, but can handle corners like nobody's business. It can get through many turns without even slowing down. Abeille: the Alouette's fraternal twin, but it starts out at grade 3. Although it shows the same performance characteristics as the Alouette when both are at the same grade, the Abeille seems to have slightly better handling but a slightly weaker engine. Looks rather nice. Pegase: the mid-priced luxury Age, this car looks like a roadster from the 30s, but outperforms many of the other available cars. It starts out at grade 4, and is capable of outmaneuvering any non-Age car in the game. At grade 5, it has the best engine of the three regular Age cars, but the least effective cornering skills. Victoire (Diable): the ultimate Age car, and the best choice for the three regular tracks in the Diable class. It is so incredibly responsive that it will take hours for you to simply become adjusted to the pace, never mind winning the Diable races. It is the least expensive of the three Diable cars, coming in at just over 2 million cg.
Lizard
This is obviously the American car company in this game, with the distinctly American cars in its repertiore. Lizard seems to focus its efforts on maximising acceleration, at the expense of nearly everything else. Fortunately, its cars slide well, provided they have loose tires. Choose Lizard for great incline-busting performance, but not for cornering. The Lizard cars are the most difficult cars to learn to accurately control, but they are well worth the effort. Instinct: starting out at grade 2, this 70s-style Firebird is the budget Lizard car. It starts out with impressive acceleration characteristics, but precious little of anything else. Keep the tires slick and learn to skid, and you just might win a race or two. Bayonet: with its 70s-styled Corvette looks, this car comes in as the grade 3 counterpart to the Instinct. It's more expensive, but it looks better. Its performance seems to be essentially the same as the Instinct, but I'm not very good with either. Hijack: serving as the resident truck, the Hijack starts at grade 4 looking like it just drove in off a Friday night city strip. (The only things it's missing are flourescent lights underneath.) It's the mid-range performer of the Lizard group, and incidentally is the most persistently irritating computer car in the game. (play against it, and you'll understand) When all is said and done, it's fun to drive this, even if it doesn't handle worth beans. Tempest (Diable): In case you wanted a fifties-styled dragster, there's the Tempest. It accelerates like a bat out of Jigoku, but sounds truly awful as it does so. The engine actually sounds like teenagers with a James Dean fixation worked on it, and it handles that way too. Better brush up on your sliding skills for this one, if you can afford it (over 3 million cg). That, and keep slick tires on it.
Assoluto
They're sleek, they're bad, they're Assoluto--the obvious Italian/German automotive influence in Rage Racer. And you must buy one, if you want to win the soon-to-become-infamous loop track. No other cars can match them for sheer top speed or adrenaline. Get one today! Just don't use it on a regular track. Fatalita: entry-level for high-speed racing (if there is such a thing). This is the one featured in the intro and credits, and it really looks good when it's grade 5. It starts out at grade 3 for a mere 20000 cg, and will carry your frenzied virtual butt over the finish line first if you can handle it. Like the other Assolutos, learn to anticipate corners, since these V-12 monsters don't turn too well. Istante: The grade 4 Lamborghini to the Fatalita's Porsche, The Istante has nearly the same characteristics as the Fatalita, so buying it may be a bit unneccessary. But t sure looks cool in the replay, and it's a lot cheaper than a real Lamborghini. Ghepardo: something like a Porsche 962, this car is made for speed. Its extreme cost may lessen the attraction, but it does handle better than the other two regular Assolutos at grade 5. Dragone (Diable): You must buy this car. It's that simple. Sure, it's 6666666 cg, but it can hit at least 372 km/h on straightaways. Plus, it looks like something out of Blade Runner.
Game Secrets:
RGB Mode: to access RGB colour editing capabilities in the Design mode, go to the colour select and press L1, L2, R1, R2, and select. Up and down selects R, G, and B, and R2+up or down changes the values.
Mirror Tracks: While the track loads, hold down L1, R1, start, and select until the race begins.
(big thanks to Oliver Dainton's FAQ for the codes)
In the future, we hope to bring you the secret track...