The sunset that greets the player on the first lap of the second track consists of the richest Del Monte orange imaginable. Water lapping up against the thin stretch of road halfway around the novice course is turned a beautiful shade of peppermint green thanks to its shallowness and the sand underneath, a section of track made all the more memorable and heavenly due to the flash of lens flare that appears for a split second just out of the corner of the player’s eye. Planes jetting off to new destinations, sailboats idling on all sides: the atmosphere is clubland holiday, a paradisiacal Ibiza.

That environment is married to three of the most demanding arcade racing courses ever created. Each is a playground, and every last bend in the road is an opportunity for showmanship. But then so are the straights – when you’re coming from behind upon a tightly bunched pack of opponent vehicles, the thrill of weaving through them without colliding is unparalleled in the genre, thanks to that twitchy, pernickety handling.

This notion – that Revolution’s island is a playground – is reinforced by a suite of extras that show Namco’s developers at the peak of their craft, as much fans of their own output as anybody else. Mirror mode returns, a reward for those players who decide to see what happens if they drive in the wrong direction, but it’s the least of Revolution’s gifts to its fans. Extra cars and the Buggy mode are fine bonuses, but it’s Spinning Point mode, accessed via a simple button press combination, that truly exhibits the intimate level of understanding that Namco shared with its followers.

Those who put serious time in with Ridge Racer soon discovered that it was possible to abuse its unique handling model to perform videogame racing’s single most outlandish manoeuvre: the 360-degree spin. Or the 720-degree spin. Or even, with enough timing and practice, the 1,080-degree spin. It’s a dizzying and exhilarating action to watch somebody else perform, let alone to pull off yourself, and surely one of the most memorable gaming moments.