This might be a weird post but stay with me here.
Bandai Namco has perfected an art. The art of creating cute memorable waifus for their games, and they appear everywhere they can touch.
Of course, having a cute waifu helps with notoriety, even if the games were terrible, someone would still talk about the ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ late 90's-early 2000's CG renders of Reiko Nagase, but luckily, the games are awesome.
She goes way back
Reiko is definitely the most well known of these girls, as she has appeared in almost all Ridge Racer games. With the 1st showing her with longer hair, while the rest all have a more tomboyish cut, something sort of pretty prevalent of on other characters in original BANDAI Namco IPs.
Reiko had one notable abstention in Ridge Racer 5, where she was replaced by Ai Fukami, which was not liked by most players at all.
Ai Fukami in PS2 pre-render glory
The often cited reason is that it just didn't make any sense to change. Reiko was already THE face of Ridge Racer to this point and she felt awkward being there. So by the next game, Reiko was back on her throne.
Reiko does indeed feel like she has a lot more character, with Ridge Racer Type 4 even featuring her in the intro, in the moment she gains a love of cars, per lore.
And I'm not alone in liking Reiko it seems, as she's still here, all the way to Ridge Racer 7 on her (in my opinion) best form.
If THAT isn't cute, I don't know what is.
Moving out of Ridge Racer, the next game I want to talk about is Ace Combat...
And its Ridge Racer reference.
Okay, nah, just kidding, Ace Combat has some cute girls too, specifically, Ace Combat 7.
And a thing I liked about Ace Combat were the multiple viewpoints that you see the story through in the cinematics in between missions.
Being set between Avril Mead, a mechanic from Osea that fixed an airplane by herself, Princess Cossette of Erusea and Doctor Schroeder, also from Erusea.
I'll start off with Avril, as it's with her that the game starts with.
Definitely a way shorter cut than other Ace Combat girls.
That stays short and messy as she spends time in an Osean prison camp, having to fix up planes and narrating the story for her perspective, where you get to know a lot about her.
This is a character that's growing a lot on me, as that cocky attitude sits just right with me.
She's been called a tomboy and a scrap queen, and frankly, she's both. This way of story telling is a lot better than how the previous Ace Combat 7 games did it, and having so many memorable characters that you can pick out favorites is a great thing. The writing and direction isn't bad at all either.
Royal charm
In the story, Princess Rosa Cossette D'Elise or simply, Princess Cossette, is described as being someone who will bring great things to Erusea, with her beauty, charm and use of words.
And indeed, she's not just a cute face, nonono. She has an iron will politics and was born into a family of commoners before the Republic of Erusea became a kingdom. She's not putting up an act to do her charm, and she's naturally humble. She knows what war does to people. Unfortunately, her nation seems a bit misguided.
Spin-off Time!
Now here's a game most people haven't heard off, but it's one of my favorite.
Gran Turismo? Get outta here, I want my Bandai clone, thank you.
R: Racing Evolution is essentially a Gran Turismo clone with a Ridge Racer skin. The driving feels nothing like Ridge Racer, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's original, fun and a great playthrough. Lots of people had negative opinions about this game back then, but honestly, if you don't compare it to Gran Turismo, it's a great game on its own right.
It's clear that it was an attempt at capitalizing on the sim racing craze of the 2000s but they still did a good job here, specially considering there's a story.
Rena, the protagonist and my main girl, is way more fleshed out than other Ridge Racer mascots, she's an ambulance driver that saved a driver's life by being fast and agile and got an invitation to race by the driver's team leader. And she just flies upwards in the ranks, racing with real cars and sometimes on real tracks.
This time she even has a rival in the form of the spaniard Gina Cavalli, and the uhh... fanservice is real, I can't deny that. At least they have a personality and motives for doing things in the story, and by the end you learn that Gina wasn't being mean for no reason, it was a really good reason.
Rena just has everything going for me, probably because she resembles my fighting game childhood crush, Asuka Kazama from Tekken.
Yeah, I know I'm not the only one...
R: Racing Evolution is a great game for Xbox, Gamecube and PS2 if you can find it cheap, or emulate it. It's a good way to spend a few hours playing through the story and grinding through the challenges. A good variety of cars and tracks to race through, with a cute main protagonist, and even a shower scene, what else to ask for?
Yeah, maybe I should go outside a little. Have a good one lads.
