Admit it, when you first saw the footage of Ridge Racer: Unbounded you thought that it was a completely different game, right? Well, in fact, it was originally meant to be a completely different game. Yeap, that’s exactly what Bugbear Entertainment has revealed a few days ago. According to the company’s senior producer, Joonas Laakso, Bugbear was working on a new racing game when it was approached by Namco. The former show Bugbear’s latest game and decided to make an offer to the studio that was hard to refuse.
As Joonas Laakso said to OXM:
“We were working on a driving game and Namco Bandai saw what we were doing and asked if we wanted to make it a Ridge Racer title, and we said sure. Ever since then quite a few things have changed. Aesthetically and gameplay-wise, it would be a very different title if it wasn’t for Ridge Racer.”
This also explains why the debut in-game trailer of Ridge Racer: Unbounded felt so similar to FlatOut. On the other hand, Bugbear is not trying to simply piss off every Ridge Racer fan. This is no sim racing game. It’s pure arcade fun and Joonas admitted that the game was originally meant to be something completely else. After Namco’s proposal though, the studio made some changes to its gameplay and figured out the right steps to help Ridge Racer fans relate to it.
Ridge Racer: Unbounded is currently slated for a March 6, 2012 on current generation consoles and PC
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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