And the detail is staggering: the engine throb is the dictionary definition of throaty all the environments and vehicles are self-shadowing you can see the suspension of each wheel bouncing independently and the dust haze and mud that splatters the cars matches the surfaces that they're driving through - which means they'll even wash off when you splash through puddles. Taking place in a tropical idyll, it boasts swaying scenery, lush palm trees, lagoons with boats bobbing on the surface, and the occasional local villager cycling around. Although SEGA remains coy on the subject, judging by the demonstration, you'll be able to relive the boxy glamour of the original vehicles, and as you'll know if you've been following Eurogamer's previous coverage, races will take place across various videogamey environments, from deserts to arctic wastes, with each environment home to three courses. But each one will be available in various different liveries, and most will have different variants (set up for driving on tarmac, or gravel, or safari, for example). The finished game will include over 30 cars: four-wheel drive, two-wheel drive, classic cars, and some bonus cars. The game's creators are emphatic that they don't want the next-gen obsession with realistic detail to overshadow the essence of the original SEGA Rally, so damage won't affect your handling, and you'll spend more time powersliding round corners than worrying about what gear you should be in. It's a perfect balance for creating a game that combines the sort of anally realistic physics that characterise all modern racing games, with the 'Hollywood realism' (as SEGA calls it) of the handling. The new Racing Studio has been formed by around 50 racing game veterans drawn from the likes of Codemasters, Rare, Criterion and Rockstar, which, to judge by the demo, provides a perfect balance.
And from the voice-over man to the helicopter flying overhead, there's a lot here to suggest that the new Racing Studio will succeed in turning out an update that's as impeccably faithful and inspired as its Sumo Digital-developed stable-mate - most noticeably the racing itself. Indeed, SEGA is keen to stress that the game was born of a desire to capture the essence of the original, hence the extravagant back-end-out handling and an almost-overcrowded head-to-head showdown with other cars. A bit like a muddy version of the recently remade OutRun. The level of detail is so impressive that you can write 'WASH ME' in mud on the back bumper.īut who cares about polygons? The original SEGA Rally was undoubtedly technically impressive in its day, and the updated SEGA Rally arguably even more so, but this is a game that's about exaggerated handling and taking corners like a lunatic.
Nowadays you won't even have to leave your house to watch your PS3 or Xbox 360 shifting a rather more remarkable 65,000 polygons per vehicle. Over the intervening years, it spawned a Saturn version and a sequel that was also available on Dreamcast. The original game was created by SEGA's internal AM5 division, on SEGA's Model 2 arcade board, which was capable of pushing an amazing 150 polygons per car. Which, if my maths are correct, means that it has made about seven pounds an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 12 years. In fact it's so successful that, according to SEGA, there's one machine out there that's made over £750,000 in the 12 years since it was released in 1995.
Because the original SEGA Rally Championship is still the most successful arcade cabinet in SEGA's illustrious arcade-cabinet-making history. Well, a pretty sizeable portion of history really, or a pretty sizeable portion of SEGA's history at least. Let's start where SEGA started its presentation: with a little bit of history. Along with the persistent track deformation that they wowed us with the last time, the super-detailed, lushly tropical visuals, and a physics engine that's been developed internally from the ground up, it's a mix that SEGA's new Racing Studio hopes will capture the arcade essence of the 12-year-old original.īut we're getting ahead of ourselves. That's partly because this time they were showing off the game's 'adaptive AI' and 'bumper to bumper close competitive racing'.
This time around it looked a bit more like a fully-fledged game.
The last time Eurogamer looked at SEGA Rally it was little more than a tech demo.