ondering what Ridge Racer for the PSP is packing underneath its hood?  So are we.  At this year's CES we got the chance to sit down with Ryota Toyama, the Localization Producer on Namco's upcoming mobile racer and pick his brain on what's on the horizon for US PSP gamers.  Fast cars?  Beautiful graphics?  Wireless gameplay?  You bet.

GIO: We’ve been playing the heck out of the Japanese version of the game we have to admit, we’re impressed.  How did you guys get it so polished before launch and how long did it take to develop the game for the Japanese release?

Ryota Toyama: The Japanese development took nine months, which is quite short.  The entire team that worked on the previous Ridge Racer titles came together, including the sound team, were able to create a marvelous game in such a short period of time.

GIO: You’ve incorporated such many features in Ridge Racer, why go back to something like Rally X and throw that in there?

RT: I think it’s about being playful and looking back to where Namco started at.  It was one of the first games the company created.  Rally X is also a Japanese favorite.

GIO: What sort of features are you planning on adding for the US release?

RT: There are going to be some new gameplay elements, but I can’t go into detail about them.  It’ll be soon when we can talk about them.  But, they’ll elements that will add to the overall gameplay as well as replay value.  They’ll also be exclusive to both the US and European versions.

GIO: So you’re basically talking about things like unlockables?

RT: Yes, that’s the idea.

GIO: How has the game been received in Japan so far?

RT: Very well, it’s one of the best selling PSP titles in that country.  Actually, I think it may be the best selling title.

GIO: What do you think is the main challenge in bringing the game to the PSP?

RT: I cannot speak for the development team, but one of the challenges was getting the wireless multiplayer gaming together.  But I think you can see that the team pulled it off without any significant lag, so it’s amazing wireless gameplay.  And the challenge was in the small size of the screen, but they also managed to overcome that.  There’s so much detail in the game and it’s impressive.

GIO: What about the addition of the new “boost” feature?

RT: Some people say that they never thought it would come to this series, but it’s finally in there and the team managed to get in to work well with the “drifting” concept of the game.  So now you have to both drift and drift efficiently with the boost and I think it melds two good concepts together.

GIO:  I can see a lot of similarities from the previous games.  While the game isn’t a straight port, is it a blend of the previous Ridge Racer games?

RT: I would say that it’s not a port at all. It was made from scratch.  The two main concepts when developing this game was to satisfy all previous Ridge Racer fans from the past and make a game that really brought out the powers of the PSP.  That’s why they focused on bringing back some of the old favorites, like music tracks and courses.  It’s like a blend of all the previous games.  It’s not a port at all. All the tracks are original and nothing was reused from the previous games in that regard.

GIO:  How did you fit all the music on the game disc, what with all the gameplay that there is?

RT: It’s hard to say, really. They had a hard time choosing all of the songs to include in the game, and some of the favorites were dropped because they didn’t want to put in everything.