One of my lasting childhood memories is the Saab 900 based driving simulator at the Saab dealer in the next town. It was an OG 900 convertible that had been chopped in half behind the front seats, featuring a full dashboard and three-spoke steering wheel, and you could play Pole Position with it. It was fantastic and I still remember pushing the dashboard buttons that did nothing.
The same approach was done with Mazda’s Eunos brand, under which the first generation MX-5 Miata was marketed as the Roadster. In 1989, Mazda joined forces with the video game company Namco and Mitsubishi’s mechatronics arm, Mitsubishi Precision, to firstly create a driving simulator game that featured the new Roadster, as well as an arcade sim setup. The gaming cabinet was built using a Miata dashboard and tombstone seat, and in surviving photos you can see the full dash that even had a stereo fitted. In some setups, Mazda even provided actual Eunos Roadsters that were parked in front of projection screens, as Arcade Blogger reported a few years back.
In addition to all this being incredibly cool, it wasn’t just a marketing exercise. The driving simulator had real potential. A further development by Namco, called SimDrive, was the first arcade game to feature texture-mapped 3D polygons and what is called Gouraud shading, to provide continuous shading of surfaces on polygon meshes – a shape of things to come. SimDrive didn’t end up a fully launched commercial product, but it gave birth to something far better known: Ridge Racer, released in late 1993 in Japan.
Ridge Racer built on SimDrive’s System 22 hardware and was an instant hit. It’s an unquestionable 1990s gaming classic, complete with its made-up cars and soundtrack, something I can vividly remember decades later. Namco, having realized the game’s potential, returned with real Eunos Roadsters in custom setups for Ridge Racer Full Scale. The Miata deal was back on.
The marketing blurb for Full Scale is just delightful. “Super Realism Beyond Realism! Extremely Attractive Effect! Overwhelming live feeling! Faster, more beautiful, bodily sensible racing game with a real car. Can you challenge the maximum speed of 230 km/h?”
[Editor’s Note: I just want to mention I did something similar for an art project back in 2015 for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, but with an Atari 8-bit computer and a Lancia. – JT]
At the time, it would have cost $250,000 to fit an arcade with a real Miata built for Ridge Racer, and luckily they were as reliable as on the road. Arcade Blogger says an Eunos-based Full Scale setup survived decades of hard use in Blackpool, Britain, before finally being disassembled in 2019-2020. After repeated attempts and a degree of bungling, the Blackpool Full Scale setup, likely one of the last if not the last of its kind, was saved and safely stored from elements in 2022.
Ridge Racer spawned countless sequels, especially as Ridge Racer 2 was re-released for Sony’s new world-beating PlayStation console in 1995, as Ridge Racer Revolution, further enhancing its popularity. Along with Gran Turismo and Need For Speed, it absolutely is one of the definitive racing game franchises of the era.
1998’s Ridge Racer Type 4 introduced racing teams and story lines, as well as a memorable intro sequence that lives in my head rent free even today. It’s fun to think that the clip could just as well include a Mazda Miata.
[Source: Arcade Blogger]
SEGA Joypolis had full motion simulators in Initial D cars. It’s since been remove, but it must have been incredible:
Initial D arcade game with real cars at Sega Joypolis Tokyo
I’m surprised Jason doesn’t have a Beetle based version in that basement of his running a Namco.
I remember getting to use one of the full roadster arcade cabinets at the wharf arcade in San Francisco in the mid 90’s.