Ace Driver Victory Lap is the next polygonal Namco arcade racer getting its first ever home release
It’s the 12th of Namco’s System 11 & 22 arcade games to get a modern release through Arcade Archives
Retro specialist Hamster Corporation has announced the 12th release in its ongoing efforts to bring Namco’s early ’90s polygonal arcade games to home consoles.
The Japanese publisher has been working through the library of games released on Namco’s System 22 arcade board – which saw the company making the jump to polygonal games – as well as its more powerful Super System 22 board and its PlayStation-based System 11 board – and releasing them through its Arcade Archives series.
Now it’s announced that the latest of these, Ace Driver Victory Lap, will be released this Thursday, October 22 as part of both the Arcade Archives and Arcade Archives 2 series.
The original Ace Driver was released in 1994, 10 months after the release of Namco’s Ridge Racer. It was released on Arcade Archives back in May.
Ace Driver Victory Lap is the game’s sequel, which was released a year later. It builds on the original game by adding two more circuits, as well as a Championship mode where players race on all three courses in sequence.
Each Arcade Archives game features Original Mode, High Score Mode (where you keep playing until you get Game Over) and Caravan Mode (where you have to get the highest score within a certain time).
Arcade Archives 2 versions also add Time Attack Mode (where you try to beat the full game as quickly as possible), and VRR support for a “more accurate reproduction of the original arcade game’s experience”.
This is the 11th polygonal Namco arcade game to be released through Arcade Archives. The others currently available are System 22 titles Ridge Racer, Air Combat 22, Aqua Jet, Tokyo Wars, Rave Racer, Cyber Commando, Ace Driver, Armadillo Racing and Cyber Cycles, and System 11 titles Tekken and Xevious 3D/G.
