Sega Rally fever engulfs PlayStation 2! It’s happening tomorrow!

SPOnG has been picking up reports over the past few days talking of that most fabled of things – the return of Sega Rally to home console - in this case, the PlayStation 2.

Combined intelligence at this stage points towards the game being debuted at the ever-so-close Tokyo Game Show, with a pre-emptive strike in the global press. This is happening at some point tomorrow in all territories.

The title being bandied around right now is Sega Rally 2005, hinting that - unless Sega has swallowed some EA pills - the game won’t be hitting until some point next year.

As to why the game missed out on an arcade debut, especially given the worldwide success of OutRun2 and the various incarnations of Initial D, is anyone’s guess, though a blistering console exclusive will no doubt set the Sega fan pulse rate soaring.

As regular readers may remember, SPOnG was informed of the existence of a PlayStation 2 exclusive update to the Sega Rally series way back in 2002, though our top-notch Sega source mentioned a massive Sega online racing league; something which to date, along with Daytona for Xbox, has failed to materialise.

This also drags the series out of the never-revealed and impressively mysterious licensing quagmire it had found itself in last year. We were told, from a Sega Japan staff member back at E3 2003, that Sega Rally had stalled due to “licensing issues still to be resolved with previous versions that have already been released.” No more information could be gleaned, though the situation, whatever it was, seemed serious enough for the representative we spoke to to believe that the future of the franchise was less then certain…

So anyway, full details are due for tomorrow, so we’ll see you back here then.