{"id":456060,"date":"2026-02-05T19:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/456060\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T19:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:29:09","slug":"never-before-released-rave-racer-is-finally-coming-to-switch-ps5-and-xbox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/456060\/","title":{"rendered":"Never-Before-Released Rave Racer Is Finally Coming to Switch, PS5, and Xbox"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fans of old, forgotten racing games<\/a> have been doing pretty well as of late. Over the last two years, we\u2019ve seen the first-ever console releases of Daytona USA 2 and Ridge Racer\u2019s original arcade version. Very soon, Nintendo will even deliver a secret F-Zero spinoff thought entirely lost to time<\/a>, so one by one, we\u2019re checking off what seemed impossible. Today, we\u2019ve got another white whale to welcome, straight from the arcades. Hamster is bringing 1995\u2019s Rave Racer home via its fantastic Arcade Archives collection, and it\u2019s a big deal.<\/p>\n

See, while Namco was cleaning up on the original PlayStation with Ridge Racer<\/a>, Ridge Racer Revolution, and the especially underrated Rage Racer, it released a totally different game in the arcades, called Rave Racer. (Yeah, I know the names get a little ridiculous here, so please bear with me.)<\/p>\n

Rave Racer never got a home conversion, although one was once announced\u2014not for PlayStation, but surprisingly, PCs that used NEC and VideoLogic\u2019s PowerVR graphics card that competed with 3dfx\u2019s Voodoo and Nvidia\u2019s Riva 128 in the mid-to-late \u201990s. The second-gen PowerVR chip would go on to power the Sega Dreamcast, and see use by Sega in the arcades as well. Namco had been working to convert Rave Racer, Tekken, and Air Combat 22 for PowerVR\u2019s initial launch, as Edge Magazine extensively reported<\/a> at the time, but they never came to pass.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tConsole Archives and Arcade Archives 2 \u2013 Announcement Trailer \u2013 Nintendo Switch 2\t\t\t<\/p>\n

So Rave Racer remained stuck in arcades, where it dazzled players with better graphics, smoother driving physics, and exclusive tracks that you couldn\u2019t get on PlayStation. Where Rage Racer went for an industrial vibe, and R4 chased the avant-garde, Rave Racer continued down the path established by the earliest installments in the franchise, with a glorious but simultaneously bizarre and frankly jarring dance soundtrack. Rave was in the title, after all.<\/p>\n

Although Rave Racer never got that home port, Namco did acknowledge it in subsequent Ridge Racer releases after the series\u2019 arcade run ended. The PSP titles included Rave\u2019s exclusive tracks and even delivered some new ones set in the same environments. And choice cuts from the game\u2019s phenomenal soundtrack wound up in later installments as well, so newcomers could experience the sheer bewilderment upon hearing it for the first time.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tJAZZ MISSION \u2013 Rave Racer\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Finally, on February 26, the game will land on Switch 2. We can probably add the original Switch, Xbox Series, PS5, and PS4 to that list as well, though publisher Hamster hasn\u2019t offered more details yet. You can bet I\u2019ll be there on day one; I\u2019ve been waiting for this for 20 years.<\/p>\n

Got a tip? Reach out to tips@thedrive.com<\/p>\n

Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site\u2019s slate of daily stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest car news and reviews, no BS Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-456060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}