Ridge Racer 8

Ridge Racer 8 (Japanese: リッジレーサー8 Hepburn: Rijji Rēsā 8) is a 2022 racing video game developed and published Bandai Namco Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch. It is the ninth main installment in the Ridge Racer series. The game features over 200 vehicles, some of which are licensed cars, and 100 courses.

Gameplay
See also: Gameplay of the Ridge Racer series

Ridge Racer 8’s gameplay is similar to that of the previous games in the series, specifically R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 and Ridge Racer 7. A new course type called Sprint was introduced, in which the player must drive from one point to another as fast as possible. Unlike Circuit races, Sprint races don’t have any laps. In addition, a new game mode called Team Race was also introduced. Each player is divided into two teams of 7 and the team with the most points at the end of the race wins. The amount of points a team earns depends on what position each player is in. For example, 1st place will earn the most points for a team while the player in 14th place would earn the least amount of points for their team.

Development
In November 2019, Bandai Namco had announced that the long-awaited Ridge Racer 8 was already in production. In addition, the last Ridge Racer game to ever appear on a Nintendo platform was Ridge Racer DS in 2004, as well as the spin-off R: Racing Evoloution for the GameCube in 2003, and the Nintendo 64 title, Ridge Racer 64 in 2000.

Reception
The game received generally positive reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of two nines and two tens for a total score of 38 out of 40.