Ridge Racer Type 4 Still Holds Up, and the Reissue Finally Makes It Affordable

Ridge Racer Type 4 is a racing game. It came out on the original PlayStation. It is a first-person and third-person racer with single player, multiplayer and split screen modes. That is the whole of what the record gives us, and it is enough to say the obvious thing: this is a game about speed, drift and the small war between a clean line and a fast one.

Two Cameras, One Corner

The two camera options do different work. First person puts you at the front of the car, where the road arrives fast and the sense of speed is the point. Third person pulls back, shows the car, and lets you read the drift angle — the thing Ridge Racer has always asked you to manage. Neither is a gimmick. They are two ways of solving the same problem: how to make a corner feel like a decision.

The original shipped on the PlayStation. It is a racing game, tagged with action as its theme. You drive. You race. The camera sits either behind the car or in front of it, and you can share the screen with another player or race alone. Nothing in the record mentions a story, a cast or a named track. So the honest review has to be about the driving, and about why a 2023 port of a PlayStation racer was worth making at all.

Feature	First Person	Third Person
View	From the car	Behind the car
Strength	Speed and immediacy	Reading the drift
Best for	Time attack	Racing other cars

Split Screen Is the Real Test

Split screen matters more than either camera. Multiplayer in a racing game usually means a lobby and a wait. Split screen means the person next to you, and Ridge Racer Type 4 supports it. That is the mode that will decide whether this holds up on a modern television, because split screen is unforgiving: it halves the frame, doubles the pressure, and exposes any racer that was only ever fun alone.

Single player is where the game lives. Multiplayer is where it argues. The 2023 port adds up-rendering, rewind, quick save and custom video filters. Rewind is the honest admission that a racing game is a series of small failures, and quick save is the same admission with less patience. Custom video filters are the least important addition and the one most likely to be used first.

None of these features change the race. They change the cost of losing it. A rewind turns a ruined lap into a rehearsal. A quick save turns a hard corner into a checkpoint. For a game built on precision, that is a real trade: you lose the sting of a bad run, and you gain the ability to learn one.

Rewind Is a Negotiation

Here is where the paper lands. The 2023 port is the version most people can actually play, and its additions are thoughtful. But the additions are also a confession that the original was hard in a way modern players have been trained to avoid. Rewind and quick save are not enhancements to Ridge Racer Type 4. They are negotiations with it.

The original PlayStation release had none of that. It had a disc, a controller and a lap time. That is the version the game’s reputation was built on, and it is the version this review is scoring. The port is a good way to reach the game. It is not the game’s best argument.

What holds up is the structure. Two camera angles, three modes, one job: go faster than the other car without leaving the road. Ridge Racer Type 4 does not need a plot, a cast or a named track to justify itself. It needs a corner and a reason to take it well. It has both.

What does not hold up is the assumption that a modern player will accept the original’s terms. Split screen is a social mode in a world that has largely stopped sitting on the same couch. Single player is a grind in a world that has largely stopped tolerating one. The port’s rewind and quick save are not luxuries. They are the price of entry now.

The 2023 Port Softens the Cost

That is the tension worth naming. Ridge Racer Type 4 is a clean, fast, focused racer, and it was clean, fast and focused before anyone offered to undo a mistake for you. The 2023 port preserves the racing and softens the cost. Whether that is preservation or dilution depends on how much you think a game’s difficulty is part of its identity. This paper thinks it is. A lap you can rewind is a lap you did not really finish.

Title: R4: Ridge Racer Type 4
Original platform: PlayStation
Port publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Port platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Port year: 2023
Genre: Racing
Theme: Action
Modes: Single player, multiplayer, split screen
Perspective: First person, third person
Port additions: Up-rendering, rewind, quick save, custom video filters
Score: 8 of 10