How Inertial Drift revitalised the arcade racing genre

After the infamous double whammy of Split/Second and Blur seemed to herald the genre's demise, we've been spoiled for high quality arcade racers in recent years. Hotshot Racing kicked things off, while last year's Senna Forever expansion gave the excellent Horizon Chase Turbo a fresh boost and in its wake was impressive superscaler tribute Slipstream - yet amidst that bumper crop there's one that stood out.

Inertial Drift's an arcade racer that's both familiar and refreshingly different; styled after the eternally slick Ridge Racer Type 4, developer Level 91's debut distinguishes itself with a novel handling model built around a twin-stick system. It's innovative and kind of ingenious, putting a welcome emphasis on the art of wrestling with a car that wants to live life sideways.

"I'd started working on this prototype based on Ridge Racer," Michael O'Kane, director and programmer of Inertial Drift, tells me. "I loved Ridge Racer, and I felt like there was a style of drifting arcade game that had disappeared."

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