First and foremost, let's get some things out of the way. Ridge Racer DS is a straight port of Ridge Racer 64. The same tracks and cars that you remember from the N64 game are here, with a few changes in the names and paint schemes of some cars to include Nintendo-themed racers. The game runs fast and smooth, which is even more impressive for a handheld. The cool-cat announcer and the snazzy music tracks from the console version are also here on the DS. The multiplayer choices, all wireless of course, are superb in both the multi-card and single-card options. You would think that a good racing game on the N64 would easily translate into a fine DS launch title. Well, it almost does, except for one rather large oversight.

Touch screen steering does not work as well as we all thought it would.

Sure, it looked promising from the first screenshots. Using the touch screen to steer your car seemed like a really cool idea, since it would make a suitable replacement for the analog stick the DS doesn't have. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. The two touch screen steering options both have their own set of problems. The first choice, appropriately called Hard Play, uses the stylus. To go straight, you either do not touch the screen, or touch the stylus against the dead center of the screen's x-axis. If you move to the left or right just the slightest bit, you will turn in that direction. If you reset your stylus off-center, you will turn as severely to the side in proportion to how far from center you missed. Dragging the stylus back and forth happens a lot, since there are a lot of twisty sections, but since you really don't have a solid reference point for where the center is, you will find that when you think you've returned to center, you are in fact off to the side, and therefore are not going straight. On top of that, the button mapping is a little dumb, in where you must hit X for gas and B for brake, which translates to up and down on the D-Pad side. This means you can't press both buttons at the same time without accidently shifting (A to shift up, Y to shift down), a must for expert drifting.

Expert Play is the thumbstrap option. Instead of relying on the center of the screen for straight ahead, wherever you place your thumb will be considered the center point. New problems arise from trying to steer a car in this fashion. For one, if your thumb was put on the touch screen too close to the left side, you won't be able to slide your thumb over to the left far enough without running out of space, and therefore will understeer into a wall around some of the tight left turns. The problem with no solid center point reference is much worse when using your thumb, as the length your thumb needs to travel to fully turn a direction gets cut in half. If you were off a little bit from center with the stylus and gently veered into a wall, being slightly off-center with the thumb pad will make you slam into the wall instead. The button mapping is worse in this mode, as you can only use the action buttons to go and stop, shafting left-handed people. Both the touch screen modes completely neglect the L and R buttons, which could have been used for acceleration, shifting, or anything.

The final, and "best" option you're going to have available to you if you want to play Ridge Racer DS with any sort of success, is the D-Pad option. Drifting and turning around corners is easiest with it. A for acceleration and B for brake, that's the rule for racing games on handhelds, and this control mode follows it. If it weren't for some other problems that will be mentioned in a moment, this would have worked just fine. For the most part, it does great in the slower speed classes on the easier tracks. The steering wheel turns just the right amount for the length of time you hold the direction down (once you get the hang of it), and steering too much can be quickly corrected by steering back the other way in time to avoid the wall, something that's virtually impossible to pull off with the touch screen.

Now, what you lose with D-Pad steering is the precision of staying on a line that will take you around a corner and getting around slower cars without hitting anything. As cars speed up and it gets harder to pass, you will find that trying to get by three cars at the same time is hard enough to do on a straightaway, let alone a curve. You will hit other cars and the wall when trying to pass the majority of the time. The thing that sucks about this is that the same funky collision that plagued the N64 version is here too, meaning that if you hit a car, a car hits you, or you hit the wall, you will slow way down. Hitting walls and other cars in this game is inevitable. Since you need to be perfect (and then some) when doing car attack races on the three Expert tracks and Ridge Racer Extreme track, you can either put up with countless frustrations on track memorization and turn patterns, or you can give up entirely.

If you decide to put up with it, the rest of the game is actually rather decent. The game runs quite fast for a little screen, but it should be said that this is an N64 game we're looking at, and even though it looks good for a DS game, it should have looked better given this new hardware is more powerful than the N64. That aside, the racing action is okay after you've conquered the control issues. It does take a good deal of skill to get past the lead cars, and every so often, taking the lead doesn't mean you're going to keep it, so you need to race hard even while out front.

The game works in the same way that the N64 did. You start off with a few cars, and the easy version of the three tracks. When you win the three races in the stage, you can race the middle difficulty version of the tracks in a higher speed class, or race other against a car one on one to win the right to drive it. After first going forward, the extra tracks will have you do the tracks in reverse. You'll eventually reach the speed course Ridge Racer Extreme track that was made exclusively for the Nintendo versions of the game. Along the way, you'll unlock Namco and Nintendo race cars, like the DK Racing Team three-wheeler and the Princess Peach car (colored pink, of course). Secret cars are also in the game, but unlocking them requires you to some crazy things.

The best part of Ridge Racer DS is easily the multiplayer options. Obviously, you have access to all cars and tracks you've unlocked if you play the the multi-card mode. The single-card mode is actually quite good, allowing everyone access to a pretty good variety of cars and tracks. The best part of it is that both modes support six players, which is awesome if you can get that many people together, with or without the game. At least the multiplayer options are great, turning a pretty disappointing single player game into a better overall game.

The bottom line for Ridge Racer DS is that the game looks and feels a little dated (despite it being "new"), and control and gameplay issues combined make for a sometimes frustrating game. If you can turn a blind eye to these problems, you'll get some fun out of this game, especially if you can take advantage of the multiplayer. Since this is really just a straight port of Ridge Racer 64, though, if you've played that version of the game to death and are already familiar with it, you're better off not picking up the DS version, instead looking for someone else that has it to play the multiplayer.