After delivering a standout port of Sega Rally, solo developer Wanszai strikes again with Ridge Racer Collection, a project bringing together three pillars of Namco arcade racing: Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer 2, and Rave Racer. Available for free on PC and Xbox consoles, this native port pushes these Namco System 22 classics well beyond what MAME emulation could offer until now.

A complete technical overhaul

The three games now run in 16:9, at 60 frames per second, and can scale up to 4K resolution — a level of clean, alias-free rendering that had never been achieved through MAME before, even though the original textures remain unchanged. The port runs on PC as well as Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

Wheels, force feedback, and 8-player multiplayer

The project supports racing wheels, pedals, and gear shifters, with a force feedback system for PC and Xbox Series. Rave Racer already handled force feedback in its original arcade version; Wanszai had to build synthetic force feedback for Ridge Racer and Ridge Racer 2, still a work in progress according to notes on the official GitHub repository.

On the network side, the progress is notable: while the original cabinets limited multiplayer to two players, Ridge Racer 2 and Rave Racer now support up to 8 simultaneous online players, for free, with no sign-up required, and full cross-play between PC and Xbox. The only current multiplayer limitation: manual transmissions are restricted to sequential shifting online, and H-pattern shifters can't be used online for now.

No copyrighted content distributed

As with his previous ports, Wanszai doesn't provide any copyright-protected files: users must supply their own roms (namcoc71.bin, namcoc74.bin, raverace.zip, ridgera2.zip, ridgerac.zip, ridgeracb.zip). Only the international (World) romset is supported at this stage; support for Japanese roms is planned for a future update, once force feedback has been stabilized.

How to install it

Installation remains simple: on PC, just drop your roms into the dedicated folder; the process is identical on Xbox 360. On Xbox Series consoles, files need to be copied to the root of a USB drive to be installed on the game's first launch. We won't go into the technical details in this article since full instructions are available on the project's GitHub.

The developer notes that all of his ports remain free, though a donation via Ko-fi is always appreciated to support his work.

Sources: The-Retrogamer.com, DSOGaming, GenerationAmiga, GitHub - wanszai/Ridge-Racer-Collection