Yeah, people trashing Saturn for not achieving Model 2 quality are just being silly given the gulf in capabilities. Ridge Racer was about as downgraded as Sega Rally yet it was originally a much lower end arcade game. Sure, it played at a more stable 30fps vs Daytona's uneven framerate but the core games were leagues apart so that was natural, it didn't prove anything about the Saturn was substantially worse than the PlayStation (which only really proved itself more capable way later with AAA games Saturn didn't get to have much of, earlier on even multiplatform games not tuned to its strengths only performed a little worse on Saturn, often with some better aspects at that, from Tomb Raider to Resident Evil and the first couple of Wipeout games, not to mention its treasure trove of great 3D exclusives and 2D titles that whether exclusive or not were better on it) and it was still a faithful version of the hottest arcade game in your home which was mind blowing in reality (vs the fantasy of PlayStation being able to do Model 2 games as good as it did the far inferior arcade games). I'd say Ridge Racer is a port of similar quality to the also trashed Virtua Fighter (not Remix or 2, the former has subtantially better textures than the arcade, closer to 2 even, while the latter has downgrades - duh - but retains the 60fps that Ridge Racer only got with that RR Type 4 bonus disc tech demo, which still had other downgrades and only pit one car against you etc.) what with having halved fps, downgraded visuals but the same arcade gameplay (with less opponents for RR but oh well). You just traded some glitchy disappearing polygons of one for the PlayStation's trademark texture and polygon warping. Although I guess without counting the state of the original game but just the final results then RR resembles VF Remix more than the vanilla game due to using texture mapping etc. more. Anyway, why does every Sega related thread or even random game threads like Tomb Raider LTTPs have to devolve to people trying to pass Saturn or Dreamcast bs as facts?
It's not a port and is basically perfect for what it is, brilliant visuals, draw distance, smooth framerate, etc. It just needs some subjective/personal tinkering for the gamepad controls to feel right and is not as popular (which 2 isn't either vs the 1st) since it was confined to this one home platform.
The game looks nicer in 480p and proper colors, this looks washed out cos it's PAL 60 in S-Video or whatever causes capture issues (funnily enough similar to some real
Model 2 Daytona USA captures also being washed out), but it's rare good player full championship footage so it will have to do.