Game Music Showcase: Ridge Racer

Ridge Racer is Namco's signature racing game series, released on the arcade first in 1993. While it has never been known for being extremely standout, it was one of the pioneers of the 3D racing genre and still holds an important spot in today's gaming lineup. Look for any console's launch games, handheld or otherwise, and high chances are Ridge Racer will be there, whether it's being an important pivot game to show off a console's technical capabilities or simply to fill in the gap for a much-needed racer. It looks authentic, but everything from the cars to the tracks used in Ridge Racer are actually fictional, with inspiration drawn from real-life models. The handling and physics also deviates from most serious racing sims, with drifting being a common occurrence in the game.

Namco freely uses the Ridge Racer songs in Taiko no Tatsujin as many of the songs chosen have high difficulty potential, in fact there isn't a single Ridge Racer song on this list that has below 8* on Oni. The song series began in Namco Original but was shifted to its rightful place in Game Music somewhere in the Taiko 10 generation, with a few songs being left out of the change simply because they were not included in the new songlists. The songs are composed by different people, as opposed to one person coordinating an entire song series.