People’s expectations of racing games have changed dramatically over the years. When the original PlayStation launched with the very first Ridge Racer game by its side, people were blown away. It didn’t matter that for the cost of the game (£45) you only got one track in two slightly different forms (along with reverse and mirrored versions) and a few cars – people were just happy to have a racing game where they actually drove round a proper city, rather than where they simply drove up a neverending strip of road that failed to ever reach the 2D arrangement of structures in the distance. Plus, Ridge Racer on PlayStation was an arcade game. This really meant so much – the very fact you could play this arcade game that cost thousands more in the comfort of your own home, made up for the fact that it basically only had one track.

These days it’s unlikely people will even make the connection that a game has come from the arcades, let alone base their buying decisions on the fact. They’re more concerned with knowing whether or not they can customise the cars with silly spoilers, rims and hilarious neon under-lights that people laugh at in real life. The mass-market also wants realism. People want real cars, licensed modifications and cities that look as photorealistic as possible. The arcade racer is all but dead.

Or is it? Going up against Project Gotham Racing 3 and Need For Speed: Most Wanted is Ridge Racer 6 – the latest in Namco’s franchise. But has it kept its arcade sensibilities or has it evolved, desperately losing its charm as it scrambles to adapt to the needs of today’s market? Well, unlucky for today’s market it has made little effort to fit in. It doesn’t have a deep and complex upgrade system, the cars aren’t licensed and the tracks are not realistic. Ridge Racer is what it is, and thankfully, this won’t change.

We say thankfully, because we miss games like this. We miss games that are unashamed to be games and don’t attempt to accurately recreate the dull, depressing world around us that we started playing games to get away from in the first place. While the mass-market will no doubt ignore Ridge Racer 6 in favour of PGR3 and Need For Speed, there will be a whole crowd of gamers who will prefer this. Not because it looks the most realistic, or because it has the largest selection of licensed cars, but because it is simply a next-gen update of the sort of games they miss so much.

The moment you start playing it’s obvious that this is a Ridge Racer game. All the same important elements are in place, such as the colourful cars that get sillier and sillier as the game progresses and the huge roadside structures and sprawling bridges. As you race, helicopters and aeroplanes fly above in typical Ridge Racer style and the more urban levels display massive glowing signs and displays. Some tracks even contain sections boasting huge glowing tunnels, that with their futuristic look and insane spiralling sections seem like something you’d see in a Wipeout game rather than a game where you race cars. In addition, there are tons of little touches that also reinforce the game’s charm, such as the colourful confetti that flies at you as you pass through that all-important finish line. All of this nostalgic visual craziness is presented in a fully locked 60 frames per second. This speedy frame rate creates a solid world and ensures that everything moves in a super smooth fashion and mimics the sort of solidity that you get from arcade games.

Fans of the series will also note Ridge Racer’s unique graphical style is not the only compulsory element in the game’s make up – there’s also that thumping cheesy rave music that accompanies each race. Love it or hate it, Ridge Racer 6 features a range of cheesy rave/techno style tunes that, regardless of music taste, do suitably fit the bright, often neon-laden tracks you race in.

What Ridge Racer is most famous for however, is its own hearty brand of driving that features some of the most outlandish and unbelievable drift physics ever seen. Most arcade racers at least try to keep their racing dynamics somewhere close to reality, but Ridge Racer boldly says "to hell with it" and allows some of the most spectacularly impossible actions ever. As you approach an incredibly tight corner, simply enter a drift; you spin wildly to the side and almost effortlessly breeze around the tightest of corners, the only difficulty is in correcting your position when you no longer wish to travel sideways.

Drifting is a massively important part of Ridge Racer 6, and a new addition is the Nitrous boosts that you can gradually charge up and use as you wish. This comes in the form of a three-bar meter in the top right of the screen that fills up as you drift. The more you drift, and the quicker you’re driving as you drift, dictates how quickly it fills up. The Nitrous is flexible – you have the choice of just using one or two bars, even when all three are full. The more you use in one go, the more of an effect it will have on your speed, a fact that is shown to you via the different severity of the motion blur and colour bleeding that accompanies the Nitrous’ activation.

When you first start playing you’ll no doubt save up Nitrous for use near the end or when you need it most, and you’ll mostly just fire it off when you’re on a straight bit of road. However, as you get further into the game you realise this isn’t what Nitrous boosting is all about. Given the way in which drifting guides you round corners, it’s not long before you start experimenting with doing this while in the middle of a furious boost. This is advisable because when you drift at such high speeds, your Nitrous bars fill even quicker. Most importantly, just as your boost runs dry you have a window to acquire what is called Ultimate Charge. This is where you drift just as the Nitrous runs dry and in doing so the Nitrous bars glow pink instead of yellow and fill much quicker than they would otherwise. For skilful players, it’s often possible to spend most of the time in a state of Nitrous boost as a result of constant drifting and expert acquisition of extra boost.

This method of play isn’t so essential for the first few hours. You're nearly always in first place by the second lap of a race – even without using any Nitrous at all. As soon as the extra areas are unlocked however, everything changes and players are thrust into a much more demanding game, where you really need to use Nitrous wisely to defeat some infuriatingly tough opponents.

It’s this latter portion of the game where the single player really comes into its own. Opponents test you to your very limits and for the first time you become infuriated as you’re forced to repeat one of the more difficult races for the seventh time thanks to being jipped at the finish line. You’ll get annoyed, you’ll turn it off and when you’ve calmed down you’ll go back, with fresh determination and a new appreciation of the game.

This is hardcore, old-school gameplay at its absolute finest. And when you’re done yelling at the computer, you can take your game online and have your skills tested further still by other Xbox Live members.

Online play takes two forms – Global Time Attack and Online Battle. In Online Battle you fight it out in real time with up to 13 other opponents over the course of the host’s choosing. It’s standard online gaming fair and will take up a huge chunk of your play time as you become addicted to out-skilling opponents.

Global Time Attack is basically you against the registered times of others, which is a more solitary experience. However, you are challenging other players and not just for the satisfaction of beating them, but for a place on the game’s online leaderboard. While realtime races are undoubtedly the popular draw, the desire to beat the high scores of others will have hardcore, old- school arcade gamers hooked. These sorts of gamers believe beating high scores through skill and dexterity is what gaming is all about, and as such, this will get a lot of attention. You’re not just racing against the clock blind either – you can download ghost data of the best performances, allowing you to see how they went about achieving such amazing scores and giving you a better chance at emulating and bettering someone else’s success.

Ridge Racer 6 is an excellent game, full of arcade charm and some ludicrously flamboyant racing that is as tight as it is insane. The thing is, Ridge Racer 6’s wonder takes time to discover – the mundane nature of the first section and the tedium often experienced when trawling through early stages, unchallenged and unexcited leaves many players wondering what it is that Ridge Racer 6 is supposed to be delivering.

Early on, little skill or talent is required for success so it’s unlikely you’ll bother learning the intricacies of the Nitrous and drift systems. This creates problems when you progress and inevitably you need these skills due to the sudden rocksolid challenge ahead of you.

For those who are prepared to put in a bit of patience and effort into the game, Ridge Racer 6 will eventually show what it’s all about and may even be the old-school gamer’s racer of choice over the crowd-pleasing PGR3. However, if you’re going to overlook the arcade-type thrills and spend your time wondering where all the fancy modding options are or where the officially licensed cars are hiding, then you’re unlikely to get what Ridge Racer 6 is all about and you should probably hunt out Need For Speed or something else that lives up to your expectations. However, for those players who don’t care for the street-racing lifestyle aspect of modern racers and prefer the arcade lifestyle of pure fun, skill, competition and score challenges to boot, then this has the potential to be your racing game of choice. Some people won’t get it, but for those who do give it a chance to impress – it’ll be well worth it.