In honor of IGN’s ‘90s Week celebration, this month’s installment in my regular column about forgotten games is going to go just a little broader. Instead of looking at a single game that may have faded from public discourse, I foolishly promised my fellow editors that I’d look at the entire launch lineup of the PlayStation and highlight all the obscure gems we once loved to play.
Hey, I was there – at launch – and picked up my PlayStation at our local Toys R Us using one of those printed-out tickets you had to take to the “Keeper of Valuable Goods” behind the glass window. (I think his name was Geoffrey. Maybe.) IGN didn’t yet exist – our first website launched in 1996 – and as a university student with limited means, I picked out a batch of games that looked most promising to me and that my budget could bear. I can’t tell you what exactly motivated me to choose the games I did, but Air Combat, Battle Arena Toshinden, Kileak: The DNA Imperative (“The Blood”, for my European friends), and Ridge Racer all came home with me. I didn’t buy a new 3D console to play NBA Jam or Raiden arcade ports, but the promise of bringing 3D arcade graphics home with Ridge Racer was reason enough for me to shell out $299 and take a chance on the PlayStation at launch.
With IGN Playlist, you can copy and remix the above PlayStation Launch Games list and rearrange it to create your custom, sharable ranking.
So, no. There isn’t more than a single forgotten gem in the PlayStation’s launch lineup in my book. So to make this more interesting, I have to cheat a little and look at the “launch window”. The quotes are here as a reminder that console manufacturers used to use that term to pretend they had much better console launch lineups than they actually did. Some of those windows got quite big!
Destruction Derby: Crash Preferred
Released on October 20, 1995, Destruction Derby did something truly new. Instead of following the lead of nearly every other console racer before it and rewarding you for not crashing into opponents, developer Reflections focused on simulating collision physics to encourage you to do exactly that. The Stock Car Racing and Wreckin’ Racing modes were fun in their own right, but the star attraction for me was the Destruction Derby mode. Players entered a large arena called The Bowl and earned points by totalling other cars. This felt different. This felt new. The 3D graphics weren’t just a showcase for the mayhem on screen — they made realizing the very idea possible in the first place. It just wouldn’t have worked with Mode 7 and sprites (although I’d love to see someone try).
Destruction Derby doesn’t hold up well to modern scrutiny. Despite some great strategic touches, such as smashing into opponents with your car’s rear to protect your engine, it’s a simple game that’s light on content and heavy on shimmering textures and twitching polygons. But as a launch (cough, window) game, you couldn’t ask for a better tech demo to dazzle your friends than showing off 20 cars on screen, peeling out and crashing into each other.
I definitely wasn’t the only one who was smitten with all that wanton destruction. Reflections quickly conjured up a sequel all the while the original became one of a small club of million sellers in the PlayStation’s first year on the market. Though the developer moved on to other games after Destruction Derby 2 (including Driver, Stuntman, and, after being acquired by Ubisoft, the first The Crew), the DD series continued with the Studio 33-developed Destruction Derby: Raw before dead-ending with Arenas on PS2 in 2004.
Jumping Flash: 3D Platforming Begins
First-person platformer Jumping Flash missed the US PlayStation launch and didn’t land until November, but it made the European launch alongside my favorite 1995 PlayStation game, WipEout. The latter’s a true, brightly-sparkling gem and dangerously close to being forgotten, but I’m leaving it for a future column in hopes that a few additional months are enough to get us more than just the 2021 mobile merge game Rogue conjured up.
Jumping Flash, however, isn’t just forgotten: it wasn’t even well-known to begin with. Despite being published by Sony and receiving favorable reviews from critics, Jumping Flash remained an under-the-radar inside tip for many. Some – including Guinness World Records – proclaimed it as the very first 3D platformer, which isn’t exactly true. Infogrames’ admittedly even more obscure Continuum has it beat by half a decade, and Jumping Flash itself owes a lot to Exact’s own Geograph Seal. But it doubtlessly served as an inspiration for developers by showing what new game genres could develop now that consoles had firmly left the 2D plains behind. Though nowhere near as sophisticated as Mario 64, Jumping Flash, headlined by the mechanical rabbit Robbit, offered some surprising innovations.
For one, Jumping Flash creates a dizzying sense of height through effective environmental audio design — and by letting players double-jump Robbit upwards from platform to platform while automatically tilting down the camera on descent. This subtle camera maneuver, much later picked up by the equally free-look-devoid Metroid Prime, makes all the difference. There’s no fall damage, but the tilt ensures that you’re constantly reminded how far down the ground is; and, of course, you can actually see the platforms you’re trying to land on.
The end result is a slower-paced platformer that shares more DNA with games like Pilotwings than the many 3D platformers that followed. Developer Exact, bolstered by positive reception in Japan, even created a sequel. But both Exact’s and Robbit’s journeys end in 1999. After a spin-off game for PocketStation, the curtain fell on the series, and Exact was absorbed into SCEI.
It’s Riiiiiiiiiidge Racer!
I’ve had people tell me that Ridge Racer qualifies as a gem, but not a forgotten one. To that, I say: ask anyone under the age of 18 about it. You may encounter the occasional younger player who will readily volunteer Kaz Hirai’s meme-tastic “It’s Riiiiiiidge Racer” line from Sony’s E3 2006 PSP demonstration – but even they may answer exactly how my 20-year-old son did: “Never played it.”
The reality is that even more seasoned players will consider Ridge Racer 7 the turning point in the series – which would make Hirai’s PSP Ridge Racer big-stage presentation literally the last “hurrah” for the series as it faded in the headlights of Microsoft’s Forzas, Sony’s Gran Turismos, and an ever-expanding fleet of arcade and sim racers that have graced every platform since. Since then, Ridge Racer meandered on mobile devices and handhelds for a while, trying to recreate that special something that made many of us buy into the game on PlayStation back in 1995.
It was love at first sight when I first booted up Ridge Racer on my PlayStation. Years prior, I had marveled at Namco’s Ridge Racer Full Scale arcade machine, housed in the bright red shell of a Eunos Roadster (Miata or MX-5 by any other name) in a Shibuya arcade and had gotten quite good at feeding it my hard-earned cash. I collected many wonderful memories of my time in Tokyo – and many relate to seeing the latest technological evolution cooked up for the sprawling arcades that littered the city back then. The first time I saw this stunner of an arcade machine was after an evening of drinks with friends and the dean of our university, the inimitable Wiliam Curry – who, it turns out, provided the English voice sign-off in the Japanese Mazda Eunos commercials.
Seeing Ridge Racer running on PlayStation years later on a different continent brought all those memories right back. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. But so was Ridge Racer’s magic trick of making us gasp at what used to be the exclusive domain of arcade machines: smooth, fast, polygonal 3D. Seeing Ridge Racer for the first time on your TV at home was getting a first look at the future of gaming.
That visual impression certainly went a long way. Ridge Racer was a joy to play, but the pretty graphics also masked a distinct lack of content. The original tried its best to stretch two tracks to make them feel like three – and Ridge Racer 2, Rave Racer, and Revolution riffed on that limitation but struggled to evolve as quickly as the competition.
In an alternate universe, Namco would’ve secured a lasting place on the podium and we’d still be playing new Ridge Racer games today. Following its smash home debut on PlayStation, the series stagnated and then went in every possible direction before Namco brought in the FlatOut team with an honest attempt at moving toward a more action-focused crash racing experience with Ridge Racer Unbounded. But Burnout had already blazed those trails in this universe and gamers were as indifferent to Unbounded as to a previous star of my Forgotten Gems column, Split/Second. So Ridge Racer went mobile… and eventually culminated in touch-screen “draw your car’s path” nonsense before its once roaring engine stalled for good. Or at least, for now.
And that’s it for my top three OG PlayStation launch window (gag) games. I want to acknowledge that a few other interesting games hit the PlayStation in its first three months, so I can’t feature them all here. Unless something miraculous happens, the aforementioned WipEout will surely feature in a future Forgotten Gems. And despite all its flaws, Warhawk was a pretty fantastic experience when it first came out. Finally, there are a number of (sadly, sluggish) PC ports that saw their console debut on PlayStation, such as Discworld or X-Com, that definitely deserve another look.
Where Can You Play Them Now?
Do you want the good news or the bad news first? None of these games are rare and can be bought on eBay for a few bucks. So if you’ve got original hardware on-hand, the discs are easy to come by. The other good news is that Sony has done its best to keep at least the first Jumping Flash around. If you’ve got PS Plus, you can find the PS4 digital re-release of Jumping Flash ready for download or to stream. Destruction Derby is a bit harder to track down, but the PlayStation Classic microconsole includes both Jumping Flash and Destruction Derby – alongside other launch not-gems like Toshinden and winner of the least-likely game to spawn a TV show in 2023 award, Twisted Metal.
Which leads us to our bright-red drifting arcade wonder, Ridge Racer. It’s nowhere to be found. As much as I appreciate the inclusion of R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 in both the PlayStation Classic and PS Classic library, I would’ve expected a bit more reverence for the undisputed crown jewel of the US launch lineup. The closest thing you can get to reliving the original that made us believe in the power of PlayStation is via Ridge Racer 2, which is likewise included with PS Plus Classic.
Of the three, Ridge Racer remains the most playable, while Jumping Flash remains one of the most unique early PlayStation titles. It’s unlikely Jumping Flash will be seen as a viable target for remake, reboot, or continuation, but Namco’s big on making collections, so here’s hoping that at least the original Ridge Racer code will surface again soon.
As for Destruction Derby, if you’re not ready to shell out $99 for a PlayStation Classic and you want to get your destruction racing fix, give Wreckfest a look. It’s basically Destruction Derby’s spiritual successor. And it’s made by Bugbear – the very team that attempted to spice up Ridge Racer for the modern palate with Unbounded.
Peer Schneider (@PeerIGN on Twitter) is one of IGN Entertainment’s founders and would really like a new Ridge Racer that’s all about racing on ridges.