Ridge Racer Vita's Development Cycle Was The Biggest Race Of Them All

" That was in about April, before Ridge Racer Vita had been announced. Pay careful attention to the dates here, because it's important.

Then at E3 in May, Ridge Racer Vita suddenly appeared as a launch title — albeit in bizarre, music visualiser form. "Great," we said, "There's going to be a Ridge Racer game in time for the PlayStation Vita's launch after all." Little did we know that the game had been in development for a couple of months at that point.

In an interview with Famitsu magazine, director Hideo Teramoto claimed that development on Ridge Racer Vita started at some point in the "Spring" — meaning that the developer had roughly eight months at most to prepare the game for launch. No wonder it shipped with so little content.

Unsurprisingly, Teramoto described the development schedule as "tight". Tighter than our pair of drain-pipe jeans, we imagine — and they really are tight.

There was a saving grace though — the PlayStation Vita was easy to develop for, according to Teramoto. With the development kit already in an "advanced state", the team was able to piece together the title fairly quickly.

To be fair, we've got some hands-on time with Ridge Racer Vita and it's surprisingly solid. It's just a shame that the game's so lacking in content. Hopefully Namco Bandai bundles all of the game's Japanese DLC alongside the full Western release.