4PGP review (PS5): a 90s-style arcade racer with a modern edge

Already released on Nintendo Switch 2, new arcade racer 4PGP is an immediacy few modern games can muster; I mean, the name alone gets straight to the point – 4PGP stands for 'Four-Player Grand Prix'. Picking 'Quick Race' really does just drop you onto the starting grid, the lights tick down to green, and the pack is charging off into the first corner. No instructions, no onboarding, just racing as we did it back in the '90s.

The circuits, while loosely based on real-world tracks, are tight, quick, and pared down to the essentials. They're designed on old-fashioned arcade logic where corners can be glided between and memorised so they form a kind of rhythm, and once it clicks you’re stringing bends together in a way that pulls straight from that Sega and Namco era of racers like Daytona or Ridge Racer, where everything was about the flow.

That lineage shows up in the controls too, and I was surprised to find that acceleration and braking sit on the face buttons by default, which feels almost wrong for a few minutes until I remember this is how life was before triggers, DualShocks, and DualSense controllers. It's a deliberate choice by the developer to make 4PGP feel like a '90s racer from the controls outwards.

That same sense of design with purpose extends, as you'd expect, to the visual design, which has the simplicity and bold colour grading of a Dreamcast-era racer but the fidelity and 120 fps of a modern game. It works because 4PGP isn't copying the look wholesale, so you get that familiar burst of colour and shape that sits somewhere between Sega Rally and Daytona USA in spirit, but with a bit more solidity and clarity. The game isn't a simple nostalgia filter but rather a sharpened version of that aesthetic, and, crucially, it avoids sliding into the overly polished, slightly sterile realism you get in many contemporary racers.

Running on a customised version of Unity, designed to work within the constraints of '90s games but with modern power where needed, 4PGP has a snap to its speed and handling that you don’t really appreciate until you’ve got four players on the same screen and everything running fast and smooth, with no stutter. Here, too, the game finds its own personality as a couch-play racer that feels brilliantly personal, while most current racers focus on online modes.

There are some modern ideas layered in here – such as how tyres wear over time and slipstreaming matters if you time it right – little touches that move 4PGP toward modern racing game design, but without losing sight of the core ideas: going fast, learning tracks, shaving off time, and chasing that perfect lap time. With 14 circuits to master in the core Championship mode, you can master the bulk of the game fairly quickly once you've learnt the ropes, and the repetition begins to show through.

There are a few modern bells and whistles, such as cinematic replays, and in-race drama is limited to mastering corners, overtaking, and shaving seconds off lap times; don't even expect any dramatic crash animations or spins, or those swinging camera angles Sega used to do so well to make every race event feel like the most important thing in the world. 4PGP is lean and focused, and if you buy into its challenge, you'll find its simplicity a charm.

This is where you'll either click or drop out of 4PGP, as the sense of repetition in mastering the controls and tracks is the draw of old racing games – Ridge Racer had just four tracks, after all – and if you love that approach to racing, re-running and honing a track, if you spirit games are Sega Rally, Daytona, Checkered Flag and Monaco GP, then you'll find this a joy. Not your thing? Then you'll find 4PGP's limited but finely tuned arcade nostalgia a little light.

That’s the trade-off sitting underneath everything in 4PGP, as it isn’t trying to overstretch into a modern simulation and tread on the tyres of something like Forza Horizon 6, or build endless systems on top of systems for complexity's sake; it’s much more focused than that, built around speed, clarity and competition. It's fun riding solo in Quick Race and Championship when you click with its retro approach, but at its best when played as the name suggests, with friends in four-player mode.