I Miss These Intros... (Patreon)

I've never played Ridge Racer V.

When my Dad got a Playstation 2, NFS Hot Pursuit 2 and Gran Turismo 3 were what I binged for the next 2-3 years. I did absolutely love R4 on the Original Playstation, but being a kid, I wasn't reading magazines or keeping up with news online, so I didn't even know there was a new Ridge Racer.

Despite that…

I know it's intro. 

And I knew it so well, I felt the need to rewatch it on Youtube upscaled, and have now been repeating it dozens of times along with its full song by Boom Boom Satellites on my music player.

There's really not much to it.

A pretty Japanese girl walks along a road as some cars approach while a DJ tells you this is RIDGE CITY, before a catchy drum melody syncs up to the roaring engines approaching the model, and they drive past her…

Oh, and there's also the hilariously over the top text that tell you to CONTROL YOUR DESIRE.

No, really.

That's everything featured in this one minute opening. Nothing else to analyze, nothing else to extract some symbolic meaning from or point.

So why do I miss this?

It's not nostalgia, because as said, it's a game I've never even played.

Ironically, like the opening itself… I don't think there's much depth to it.

I think I just miss when games, even a simple arcade racer, was committed to taking you into another world.

Ridge City doesn't exist.

These cars are fiction.

Pretty woman don't just walk on an empty highway into oncoming traffic…

Not to my knowledge.

Yet, those three simple things along with a unique and infectious song, are enough to stop me thinking about the real world and escape to one where all there is are twisty roads, fast cars, attractive woman, and banging music.

One minute is all it took to do that.

From what I can tell, this did seem to be a bigger thing in Japan, and Namco in particular seemed to be the best at it.

Western Games were kind of hysterical in their edgyness during this period. I'm going to leave this song here for another racing game I played on the PS1 as a kid, and looking back on it, while I dig the track… what the hell is it doing here?

Other Japanese companies like Konami also didn't exactly reach the escapism heights of Namco, mainly I recall Enthusia on the PS2 with this awful montage short-story drama… thing.

I can't really describe it, I'll just leave a link too. 

I guess looking at these examples can explain why most modern games don't bother with an introduction setting the tone anymore.

Most players will just skip it along with logos to get into the game itself, and a bad introduction can really sour someone's first impressions, or just set them up for an experience that isn't suitable to the game.

There's plenty of things to go wrong for not much gain.

I can see all the practical reasons to not bother with these 2000s opening FMVs.

…but I can't help but smile whenever I boot them up, and given that there's multiple ones I remember for games I didn't even play, and in the case of another Namco racer, R: Racing Evolution, one I don't even like; there's an obvious power to them that I don't think should be completely ignored.