If you’re a fan of 90s arcade racers, you’ve likely scraped the barrel clean by now. Chomped through Daytona, inhaled Ridge Racer, heck, you’ve even tentatively licked Cruis’n USA. Mmm… flaky.
But what if there was an all-time classic stuck to the lid you hadn’t noticed? For me, that missed morsel is Namco’s Ace Driver, here ported to modern machines as part of Hamster’s excellent Arcade Archives II series.
Out it plops, gushing 1994’s arcade juices everywhere. I haven’t felt arcade excitement like that since Virtua Racing first hit the Switch’s Japanese eShop.
The Ridge Racer engine here renders open-wheeled Formula-styled beauties on a single, superb racetrack, all with zero pop-in, at 60fps. The visuals are glorious, easily outshining Ridge in terms of environmental complexity and realism.
Races are hard-fought against five main CPU-driven rivals and a bunch of slower backmarkers. The track layout features a sausage kerbed chicane, tricky Suzuka-esque hairpin and the obligatory tunnel, and offers supreme replayability in chasing best times.
There are Normal and Expert modes, with a third ‘Expert PRO’ mode accessed by holding the view select button. This last one is the most like a racing sim, with more realistic collisions and even wheels coming off if you hit something hard enough.
The car feels more free, kerbs don’t push you back towards the track, the race is a lap longer and the challenge is * chef’s kiss * perfect. There is still a small disparity between your car’s capabilities and the CPU-controlled cars’, but it doesn’t matter because the overall challenge has been so expertly curated.
The analogue implementation, however, is frankly terrible. If you thought Ridge Racer’s recent conversion was twitchy, this is borderline unplayable unless you use the stick like a D-pad like my girlfriend did. She finished fourth and said it was ‘easy’.
But if you’re seeking actual analogue control and aiming for first place, you’ll need to head to the sensitivity options and adjust the steering wheel rotation. Only then does it start to feel like a real, controllable car.
If you can look past this annoyance, everything else here is wonderful. Arcade announcer, music, animated trackside elements… it’s glorious. And of course you get the usual extras like Time Attack (where you play the whole game through the three difficulty levels in a row), Caravan Mode, Score Attack and up to four-player split screen ‘link up play’ simulation.
As for the apparently famous ‘rubber banding’… I’m not seeing it. I do see ‘catch-up’ on the first two skill levels, boosting your car unrealistically should you fall behind, but on Expert Pro, there’s no such help.
For beginners, Ace Driver is a harmless, simple, old-looking racer. For hardcore racing enthusiasts, there’s an absolutely stupendous game in here, genuinely in the same ballpark as Virtua Racing and Daytona USA.
Win a race on Expert Pro without using save states and you’ll have experienced one of the genre’s most exquisite delights. Get on it.
Score: 8/10
“Arcade racing heaven with imperfect analogue pad control”
Arcade Archives Ace Driver is available for Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Nintendo Switch 2 was reviewed here.