Previews// SEGA Rally

Aaaah SEGA Rally, how much do I love thee? To us you’re like an ageing, slightly-frazzled-but-once-beautiful whore who we first fell head-over-heels for twelve years ago; and who we proceeded to give all of our spare paper-round money too to get our arcade rallying rocks off time and time again. We simply could not (and still cannot) help ourselves. We still keep giving you more money every time we see you sitting lonely in the corner of a tawdry seaside arcade, because we know that one thing is certain. We give you money, you give us guaranteed pleasure.

(Okay, that's the declaration of personal interest out of the way... now what about the game? Ed.)

The original arcade version of the AM5/Sega Rosso-developed SEGA Rally Championship is, unsurprisingly, still to this day the most profitable arcade title for the company, beating Daytona USA hands down in the pennies/cents-sucking stakes. SEGA informed me that there is still one machine out there in the wild that has racked-up £750,000 in the last twelve years.

Yet, while versions of the game were ported (by AM3) to PC and home console – Saturn, and Dreamcast (with a more recent Japan-only PS2 version) it’s been a while – nay, it’s been far, far too long – since western gamers have had the opportunity to play the ultimate arcade rallying title on their flashy new high definition TVs. Or even on their grimy old standard def ones for that matter.

Over the last ten years the one increasingly popular console rallying genre has of course been dominated by Codemasters’ finely-tuned Colin McRae Rally series – and Gavin Raeburn and his talented team over at Codies will be the first to tell you of the debt they originally owed to Sega Rally for inspiring the first Colin McRae games. However, as that series has developed, it’s become more and more about realistically simulated point-to-point rallying, with some bemoaning the loss of the quick-fix arcade-hits of SEGA’s original. Aaah, is that a gap in the market we see before us?

SPOnG recently took a trip over to SEGA’s UK headquarters to be treated to a detailed demo of the all new, next gen SEGA Rally, currently in development at the newly-established Solihull based SEGA Racing Studio and due for release sometime this coming winter on PC, PlayStation 3 and (the version we saw) Xbox 360.

SEGA's Racing Studio team has, we were proudly informed, been put together from the cream of videogame racing talent from studios such as Codemasters, Rare, Criterion and Rockstar and overall we were, you will be glad to hear, mightily impressed with what we were shown. Beyond all the tech talk and USPs (Unique Selling Point), the studio has produced a game that is shaping up to be worthy of its mighty heritage. Read on to find out why.

The game looks beautiful and is set to feature over thirty cars, all with souped-up physics and handling, including the Subaru Impreza and the Ford Focus RS, as well as a healthy range of four and two-wheel drives, rallying classics and extra unlockable bonus vehicles.

It will also feature eight lusciously-rendered, beautifully-lit environments (“more blue skies was the overall aim”, quipped the producer) set across deserts, arctic-tundra and mountainous terrain with various championship and online modes, with further details to be released on the online features in the game in due course.