Long ago I played Ridge Racer on the original PlayStation and thought it was the absolute bees knees. At the time it simply was the best racer around, by way of being one of the first on that amazing new console. Of course, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and we've been treated to some far superior racing games since. That's not to say Ridge Racer still isn't regarded as a bit of a classic however, so it's no surprise that as soon as a handheld console comes out that can decently handle 3D graphics, it races straight into the palm of your hand with Ridge Racer DS.

The gameplay carries the same arcade feel as all the previous outings, being more of a fun game rather than a hyper-realistic racer. There are three modes, all of which are predictable but nonetheless quite good fun; race against other cars in grand prix, go up against the clock in time trial and or go head to head with a computer controlled opponent in car attack mode, as you attempt to win his car. Of all these, the grand prix is definitely the most fun, as you are competing with aggressive AI drivers.

None of the cars are real, yours or your competitors, all being vehicles vaguely reminiscent of models on the road in real life and so their properties are equally fictional. When choosing a car, you're basically looking at juggling four key areas, depending upon your gaming style, speed, acceleration, grip and handling. I personally went for a car that had good handling and great acceleration over a high top speed, but that is in part due to some flaws in the way the game handles. Right from the off you're going to notice that any collision favours the opposition. If you rear-end someone, you lose speed and they are given a boost, but the reverse does not appear to be the case. I found that if someone goes up my back end, my car is penalised by a drop in speed and only choosing a car with excellent acceleration to counter this seems to recover from this disadvantage. At times the game couldn't decide whether I'd hit the car or not too, either penalising me when I thought I had room to spare, or not penalising me quick enough so that I seemed to start to merge with a vehicle before being knocked back. The easiest way to avoid this is to give every car a wide berth in each situation.

The arcade feel is most pronounced in how your car approaches curves. To get around the really tight ones at top speed you have to rely on drift, which means putting your car into a controlled slide. It's easy to pick up; approaching a corner you start turning the direction you want the car to slide in, take your finger off the accelerator for a couple of seconds, then back on and bingo - one crazy power slide coming right up! On the whole, once you're into a slide all you've really got to do is make sure you come out of it with the car pointing in the right direction. Other than that it's so straightforward and simple that it's very funny and you find yourself veering crazily around even the most hairpin of bends with a look of glee plastered from ear to ear. This is one element of the game that, while a bit silly, is definitely a lot of fun.

The tracks may disappoint those not familiar with previous incarnations of Ridge Racer though. There are maybe three or four landscapes to play over, each containing a certain mileage of track on it. However, the layout of each track changes as you progress upwards through the ranks; parts of the track are closed and different ones opened up. This creates an impression of a new course when in fact it's just the previous course altered slightly. The fact that the landscape doesn't change dramatically until after four or so courses is the real giveaway, so those gamers used to more modern racing titles with new scenery and new tracks immediately on the completion of the previous one may feel a little cheated by this experience.

The developers have tried to introduce something new to the Ridge Racer canon on the DS, by offering three different ways to control the car. There's the conventional D-pad method, using the stylus to steer the onscreen wheel left and right, or the thumbstrap option. Of these, the easiest is definitely the D-pad, even if it does seem overly sensitive and can lead to some jerky driving. However, the methods that favour the touch screen are quite simply a nightmare. The bottom screen always depicts the steering wheel in your car, regardless of method, but is what you have to move in touch screen mode. Dragging your thumb or the stylus over the screen is just an exercise in pure frustration, either overshooting, over correcting or not even having your stylus on the right part of your screen. Glancing down to relocate the position on the steering wheel is a recipe for disaster, as it often means missing a curve or crashing into the opposition.

However, when all these issues are taken into consideration, I still couldn't help but have fun with the game. The action is fluid and smooth, the scenery rushes by with a real feeling of speed and the competition gets really tense in later levels, even with the ease of the D-pad method. A lot of these sensations are down to the good handling of the 3D graphics by the DS; there does is no slowdown at all, no matter how many cars are on the screen at once, and while there isn't much variety in the scenery, the landmarks you whiz past definitely give you the sensation of driving a powerful vehicle. That's not to say that the landscapes you drive through aren't carved well though, for all their lack of detail; the tunnels you speed through have beautiful lighting effects, the canyon roads look like they've been lifted right out of an Arizona photo-shoot and the mountain passes look suitably sunny, glacial and wooded. Although the landscape pixelates badly if you get close to it, the only time you're going to notice this is when you hit it and come to a full stop. Otherwise you're going to be whizzing past so fast it's too much of a blur to really detract from the game.

Unfortunately the sound has its downsides but that's not because of the music. Everyone who has played the original Ridge Racer will feel immediately at home; the music doesn't seem to have changed at all, not one chord, stanza or semi-quaver. For me this meant a huge nostalgia trip, probably more so than playing the game itself. Whether or not newcomers will take to it is another matter, as it may sound a bit dated. However, it still goes extremely well with the arcade action on offer. My only real gripe with the sound is the commentator, who repeats about six or seven phrases over and over. By the time you're halfway through the levels you want him to pop up on the touch screen so you can poke him in the eye with your stylus.

So far then we have a pretty mixed bag of an arcade racing simulation. There is, however, one feature that helps it claw back a lot of the lost kudos - multiplayer! Get five of your mates to come round with their DS's, get one, yes ONE, copy of the game and within minutes all six of you are tearing around some of the best courses this title has to offer. I can tell you this is an absolute riot! When you pull a massive power slide around a corner, leaving dust in your mates' faces the feeling is great. When it comes to a tense standoff between four pals of a similar degree of skill, the tension in the final lap can cause the sanest man to crack under the strain.

It is for the multiplayer, and probably the multiplayer alone, that you'll be playing Ridge Racer DS for quite some time. Otherwise, the single player experience, sometimes irritating commentary and slightly bugged gameplay, alongside some classic tunes and well paced eye candy, would make this title just slightly above average. As it is, even with the multiplayer it doesn't get into my Nintendo DS top five list but is well worth a look at, particularly if all your mates also own this cracking handheld unit.

Reviewed by Dave Wynn for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).