Finally, footage of never-released PowerVR version of Namco's Rave Racer for PC

[parallaxscroll]

Namco's Rave Racer, not to be confused with the unrelated Rage Racer for PS1, came to arcades in 1995, running on the same System 22 hardware that powered Ridge Racer 1/2, but this time, with higher resolution textures and 2 new complex tracks. It was once said Rave Racer was meant to 'curb' the ever-growing success of Sega's Daytona USA in arcades.

Around November 1995 Namco pledged support for the first-gen PowerVR PC card in the form of arcade ports of Rave Racer, Air Combat 22 and Tekken. Only Rave Racer was ever seen, being shown off at various trade shows in 1996. I remember seeing it on a cable TV show called 'New Media News' or something like that. Next Generation magazine previewed the port in their July 1996 issue. It ran at half the framerate of the arcade and with fewer polys. Though it was said that Rave Racer on PowerVR was doing 4 times the graphical work as PS1 Ridge Racer. Pretty impressive stuff, back then.


As time passed (and passed) fans of PowerVR grew increasingly worried, later angered, that Rave Racer never showed up. With the announcement of PowerVR Series 2 in 1997, and it serving as the backbone of the winning prototype for Sega's next console, Rave Racer for the first-gen PowerVR card was all but forgotten by the press, though not by the fans of the game or PowerVR. Namco never officially canceled it, or the other two games, they just kinda seemed to sweep it under the rug, as if it never happened. Shame.

It seems someone recently unearthed footage of PowerVR Rave Racer in 2012.


Here ya go!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZi_-Xzqyk (starts at 1:30)

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBuGwrWP-s4

[A Black Falcon]

Interesting... though I think I'll stick with the 3DFX card over a PowerVR.

[parallaxscroll]

By late '96 or early '97, I would've gone with 3DFX, but PowerVR captured my attention in early '96 due to the announced Namco ports.

[gamevet]

Here ya go!



and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBuGwrWP-s4

I like how he pronounced NEC as "neck".

[sheath]

In 96-97 I went with Matrox, particularly the Mystique. After that I went with Power VR cards and was able to get them to work despite PowerColor's incompetent drivers.

I am confused what footage in the first video is "new" of Rage Racer though. It just looks like generic Ridge Racer footage to me.

[parallaxscroll]

I am confused what footage in the first video is "new" of Rage Racer though. It just looks like generic Ridge Racer footage to me.

It's not Rage Racer released on PS1 in 1996/1997 at all, it's an early version of the PowerVR PC port of Rave Racer, a completely different game. Rave Racer was an arcade-only release (the 3rd in the Ridge series) that hit arcades in 1995.


Also:

The disappearance of the PowerVR PC port, it meant Rave Racer never *truly* came to home platforms, with the exception of Ridge Racers 1 & 2 on PSP, where you could play Rave Racer's 'City' and 'Mountain' tracks,
renamed "Midtown Expressway" and "Greenpeak Highlands" respectively, as well as two new tracks loosely based on Rave Racer, "Silvercreek Dam" and "Downtown Rave City".
The handling & physics are still 'PSP Ridge Racer' style, though. While not an exact parallal, it's not so unlike the Scud Race/Super GT and Daytona USA 2 bonus tracks in the Xbox version of OutRun2.

The arcade Rave Racer was in arcades by mid '95 (at least in Japan) before the western launch of PS1 and its port of the first Ridge Racer in Sept '95.

PlayStation owners had to settle for Ridge Racer Revolution in 1995/1996 and then the far better and much-loved Rage Racer in 1996/1997.

Finally, in mid 2002, out of nowhere came the incredible Namco System 22 emulator, VivaNonno, which initially ran the arcade Ridge Racer 1 & 2, then within a month or two, Rave Racer.
That was the only way to play the arcade versions at home, until MAME caught up in more recent years.

[FuturePrimitive]

Thanks for bringing back some memories! There was a game in that first video that I remember playing a lot on PC, with some sort of hovering ship going through 3D mazes... Anyone know the name of it? I don't remember.

Really cool find. The only way I could play a bit of Rave Racer is if I get the PSP Ridge Racer games.

[Pulstar]

I once tried Rave Racer using viva nonno, but wasn't really interested to keep playing beyond my first go. They shouldn't have bothered with a real Mazda with the first arcade game hahaha.

[MrSega]

By late '96 or early '97, I would've gone with 3DFX, but PowerVR captured my attention in early '96 due to the announced Namco ports.

3Dfx was amazing. It had some of the most impressive graphics & engines for its time.

[evildragon]

Oh my god, and I agreeing with Mr.Sega?

Yes I am, I was a huge fan of 3DFX back in the days. Glide was a nice API. And on top of that, back in 1998, I had a 16MB Voodoo3 3000 AGP. That card was so awesome, Quake III Arena with the miniGL wrapper, 60fps pure with zero stuttering.

[Pulstar]

The 3Dfx team pioneered blazing fast chips; even their ill-fated Voodoo 4's and 5's gave the competition a run for their money. But to take full advantage of the GPU the games had to be written using the Glide library, which meant tons of compatibility issues and whatnot. My only 3Dfx was a Voodoo3 2000, which was a good PCI expansion given my ailing Pentium Pro at the time. Max Payne was probably the first game that was rubbish running on the Voodoo3's. The comic panels were all blurry because the driver outputted a 16-bit picture that paled in comparison to the competition. Admittedly most PC games hardly looked better than their N64 counterparts before T&L was introduced with the S3 Savages and GeForces of that era.

[sheath]

Rave Racer, yes, I typed that one wrong letter wrong. Still, the footage here looks like generic Ridge Racer footage to me. How can we tell if it is Rave Racer?

[MrSega]

Oh my god, and I agreeing with Mr.Sega?

Yes I am, I was a huge fan of 3DFX back in the days. Glide was a nice API. And on top of that, back in 1998, I had a 16MB Voodoo3 3000 AGP. That card was so awesome, Quake III Arena with the miniGL wrapper, 60fps pure with zero stuttering.

Games like Half-Life and Unreal Tournament looked phenomenal running on 3Dfx. You're correct that 3Dfx's biggest feature was its ability to push 60FPS. Power VR 2 could also push 60 FPS, but not impressive and balanced as 3Dfx. But Power VR 2 was still a fantastic GPU card.

Kinda ironic that 3Dfx almost ended up in the Dreamcast.

[parallaxscroll]

Games like Half-Life and Unreal Tournament looked phenomenal running on 3Dfx. You're correct that 3Dfx's biggest feature was its ability to push 60FPS. Power VR 2 could also push 60 FPS, but not impressive and balanced as 3Dfx. But Power VR 2 was still a fantastic GPU card..

60fps was not a feature of 3DFX. It was upto developers to design their games around a given framerate. For example, the original San Fransisco Rush arcade games ran at 30fps. Most PC games running oon Voodoo Graphics ran at 30fps, sometimes less. Also, while Voodoo2 and especially Voodoo 2 SLI often pushed games upto 60fps, it wasn't always the case. The same can be said about PowerVR and PowerVR2.

The only hardware platforms that consistantly pushed games at 60fps were Sega's Model 2, Model 3 and to a somewhat lesser extent, NAOMI.
On the Namco side, it was the System 22 and 23 families, powered by silicon from Evans & Sutherland.