Ridge Racer helped define the ‘arcade racer’ as it’s now known, but was also part of a 3D racing game crush in the market, which would fragment the market over the next decade in a hunt for individuality. EA’s Need For Speed appeared to challenge the performance sports car arcade experience, Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo series set about putting the realism back into a driving game for the home Playstation market, and the larger cultural hunger for street racing attitude manifested itself in the aggression of Criterion’s Burnout and tuning of Rockstar’s Midnight Club games.

Ridge Racer Unbounded see’s Namco Bandai on a broader land-grab from territory that’s been dominated by Western developers. Finnish studio Bugbear (developers of the FlatOut series) seeks to fill the gap left in Burnout’s absence. The results are uneven, but surprisingly compelling – at once familiar, yet fresh.

The brisk 30 FPS graphics adequately convey the thrill of the chase as you barrel about Shatter Bay, chasing down other cars for the win. Bugbear have done a great job staying true to the brand’s established drift-racing style, while adding ‘fragging’ -  running your opponents off the road. Extraneous elements are trimmed back to a minimum and cars are anchored to the road, ensuring only a prolonged sharp turn at full pelt will throw out handling.

All matter of recklessness contributes to your facilitating Boost bar: drifting, tailgating, destruction of scenery and hitting jumps. Once accumulated, Boost is available to deploy when required, showing up shortcuts through the scenery. It also provides the added bonus of destroying rivals, which then provides further boost, creating a chain of destruction and chaos as you race.

Whereas Motorstorm and Burnout utilise this ability as a gradual secondary accelerate, Unbounded treats it with all the revere of a ‘special move’ requiring tactical deployment at key moments. And you’ll need every inch of it – coming first not only requires skilful drifting, it also needs acute track knowledge of hazards and destructible short cuts. Top three is no easy feat.

But while Unbounded allows you to career through scenery like it’s made of papier-mâché, drifting requires nerve and peak timing. It’s strange that the first tip the game offers is to “Drift to earn boost”, whereas this proves to be its trickiest to grasp.

Once you get the hang of drifting and countersteering, Unbounded becomes a gripping experience, delivering the white knuckle exhilaration previous only displayed in Split/Second and Burnout 3, with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment unrivalled by many a game – it's a shame that the tally of damage is relegated to a footnote, rather than being broadcast all over the screen for your self-indulgence.

It’s not all perfect: the stunt races suffer from strange gravitational effects, causing trouble on banked curves, or often throwing your car completely off centre on landings. Each of the districts of Shatter Bay provide the same anthracite and tope hue, bathed in orange lens flares and a brostepping electro soundtrack that won’t appeal to all, and the track creation tool is a quaint toy box add-on that’ll provide a few hours enjoyment.

While its calculating tactical approach might not belie an organic heart, in its singularity it provides an adrenaline ride when firing on all cylinders. Unbounded is a lean, athletic game – the antithesis of GT5’s infinite customisation suite.

The self-belief on display from Bugbear is all up there on screen, and it’s a progressive European-tinged step in evolving the Japanese franchise. While not perfect, its deceptive race depth and joyous recklessness will adhere it to both arcade race fans and carnage junkies – and serves as a reminder that even after 19 years, Ridge Racer is still can still deliver a wild ride.

8/10

Ridge Racer Unbounded is available now for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.