Sega’s arcade racers of the early 1990s ran on smooth tracks. Daytona USA went round oval tracks, and Namco’s Ridge Racer ran on smooth tarmac. Sega Rally Championship took its cars off the road. Its stages ran through desert, forest and mountains, over bumps, ramps and potholes, and its two cars slid and bounced on the loose surfaces as real rally cars do. Players liked it, and so did other developers. Guy Wilday, producer of Codemasters’ Colin McRae Rally, told Edge in 2005 that the basic premise of his own game “was based around the car handling in Sega Rally”: “Everyone who played it loved the way the cars behaved on the different surfaces, especially the fact that you could slide the car realistically on the loose gravel.”
Fast facts
- Developer: Sega AM3, a new arcade team whose earlier games included Jurassic Park and Star Wars Arcade.
- Director and designer: Kenji Sasaki.
- Producer: Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
- Main programmer: Sohei Yamamoto.
- Hardware: an enhanced Sega Model 2 board.
- Arcade release: early 1995 in Japan, reaching the UK in the spring.
- Cars: Toyota Celica and Lancia Delta; on the Saturn, a hidden Lancia Stratos.
- Home versions: Saturn (Japan, 29 December 1995; UK, January 1996) and Windows.
Building a rally game
AM3 showed the game at the Nicograph show in Tokyo at the end of 1994, and Edge visited the team for its March 1995 issue. “We wanted to make a racing game that was very different to all the others out there,” Sasaki told the magazine. “We were really impressed by rally as a sport in America and Europe and felt it could work well as a videogame.” In 2003 he recalled that the idea had faced two taboos in Japan: nobody wanted to make a game about an everyday “box-shaped car”, and people were uneasy about rallying itself.
The cars were real. Edge reported in 1995 that the game had the Lancia Delta that won the 1992 World Rally Championship and a 1994 Toyota Celica, and that engineers from both companies had helped without any licence fee being discussed. Mizuguchi told a less smooth story in 2003: “We asked Toyota and [Lancia owner] Fiat for help with testing but they turned us away several times. We kept trying and after they saw what we had they came onboard.” For the scenery, he remembered a three-week drive from the American west coast to Mexico, “filming and grabbing all the textures we could”. He also said that the engine sound of the Lancia Delta was the sound of his own car.
The programmers found the sliding hardest. “The skidding of the cars through bends was the most difficult point to realise,” Yamamoto told Edge, and “the jumps that the cars take over bumps were also hard work.” Sasaki was open, years later, about how far the result was from reality: “our cars in Sega Rally were drifting in a way a real WRC car would not,” he said in 2005, but “users were delighted and found our game very ‘realistic’.” He had lowered the speed compared with other racers and “focused everything on controls”.
In the arcade
The coin-op’s cockpit view had a rear-view mirror, like Ridge Racer’s, and a top speed of around 200 km/h, slower than Daytona. Mizuguchi described the cabinet’s “active shock generator”: the seat moved “to relay the relationship with the road” and reacted to knocks from other cars, and two motors drove the seat and the steering feedback. Up to four linked players could race. Edge counted the translucent car windows, through which a player could see the other driver and sometimes the cars beyond, as a sign that AM3 had pushed the Model 2 board further than Daytona had.
There were three stages, Desert, Forest and Mountain, and a bonus fourth, Lakeside. Sasaki said in 2003 that the Mountain stage came from a moment when he had lost sight of why cars were exciting at all, so he drove his own car up into the mountains, enjoyed it, and put the experience into the game.
The Saturn conversion
Sega’s first Saturn conversion of Daytona USA had been criticised for its jerky frame rate and late-appearing scenery, so the Sega Rally conversion mattered. Mizuguchi produced it, and Atsuhiko Nakamura, head of Sega’s consumer software team, directed it. Nakamura explained that “we’re making a new game using the same data. The program itself is completely different.” Mizuguchi added that the two machines drew different numbers of polygons and used different textures: “The Model 2 uses some monochrome texturing while the Saturn uses full-colour textures.”
The result ran at 30 frames a second, half the coin-op’s rate, and Edge called it “easily the most impressive example yet of the Saturn’s abilities”. The Saturn version kept an arcade mode, added a split-screen two-player mode and let players adjust a car’s tyres, suspension and steering response. Winning on Lakeside unlocked a third car, the rear-wheel-drive Lancia Stratos. Its team told Sega Saturn Magazine that it was “very difficult to drive”, and that players’ opinions had “confirmed that if another car was to be added it should be the Stratos”. Asked how their game compared with Ridge Racer, they said that Namco’s cars seemed to drift “on invisible rails”, while theirs was “based on physical calculations”, such as “the friction of the road or the shock absorbers”.
The conversion came out in Japan on 29 December 1995, under the arcade’s full title, Sega Rally Championship 1995. Edge gave it eight out of ten in February 1996. It found the arcade mode “a lonely experience”, since opponents were spread so far apart that races felt like a race against the clock, and it teased the “desert” stage for its green fields, mud and grazing cows. But the tracks “demand a totally different style of driving from the smooth tarmac of the city racers”, the handling was “a victory in simulating momentum”, and it concluded: “Virtua Fighter 2 and now this? Happy new year, Saturn owners.” In the same issue Edge named it the best driving game of 1995. A Windows version followed; PC Zone put a one-track demo on its cover disc in May 1997 and advised players who found the controls “slippery” that “you’re driving over slick runny mud and damp gravel”.
Sequels
Mizuguchi’s team made Sega Rally 2 for Sega’s Model 3 arcade board in 1998, with Sasaki directing, and it came to the Dreamcast the following year. After that the series stalled. Sega Rally 2006, a PlayStation 2 game released in Japan, earned five out of ten from Edge, which called it “an unworthy Sega Rally heir”.
Sega then set up a new studio in England, Sega Racing Studio near Solihull, founded in April 2005, and put Guy Wilday in charge. The man whose Colin McRae Rally had started from Sega Rally’s handling now remade it. His Sega Rally (2007) for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows had tracks that deformed as the cars drove over them, leaving ruts in mud and snow and rubber on tarmac. Edge gave it seven out of ten, and noted that the original game’s cars could be unlocked. An arcade version, Sega Rally 3, was developed alongside it.
Sources
- Edge issue 17, February 1995: Nicograph show report (AM3 and its earlier games, the enhanced Model 2 board, three tracks, the rear-view mirror).
- Edge issue 18, March 1995, prescreen: Sega Rally coin-op (Kenji Sasaki as director and designer, Mizuguchi as producer, Sohei Yamamoto as programmer, the 1992 Lancia Delta and 1994 Toyota Celica, the engineers’ help, around 200 km/h, the active shock generator, four linked players, the translucent windows, the Northern Europe bonus stage, the UK release in March/April).
- Edge issue 27, December 1995: Sega Rally Saturn prescreen and interview with Atsuhiko Nakamura and Tetsuya Mizuguchi (the conversion, 30 frames a second, the four tracks, “the most impressive example yet”).
- Edge issue 29, February 1996, p. 70: Sega Rally Saturn review (eight out of ten; the lonely arcade mode, the cows, “a victory in simulating momentum”, the Lancia Stratos); Edge’s games of 1995 (best driving game).
- Sega Saturn Magazine issue 3, January 1996: Sega Rally review (car settings, the hidden Lancia Stratos).
- Sega Saturn Magazine issue 4, February 1996: Sega Rally secrets and interview with Ryuichi Hattori, Atsuhiko Nakamura and Hiroto Kikuchi (the Stratos, “invisible rails”, “physical calculations”).
- PC Zone issue 50, May 1997: cover-disc demo of the Windows version.
- Edge issue 127, September 2003, pp. 108–111: “The making of… Sega Rally Championship” (Sasaki on the two taboos and the Mountain stage; Mizuguchi on Toyota and Fiat, the drive to Mexico and his car’s engine sound; the tuning options; the Japanese Saturn release on 29 December 1995 as Sega Rally Championship 1995).
- Edge issue 145, January 2005: interview with Kenji Sasaki and Jun Taniguchi on Sega Rally 2005 (the first game’s slower speed, its drifting and its “realistic” feel).
- Edge issue 145, January 2005, pp. 106–109: “The making of… Colin McRae Rally” (Guy Wilday on Sega Rally’s handling, p. 107).
- Edge issue 55, February 1998: Sega Rally 2 on Model 3, with Mizuguchi as producer and Sasaki as director.
- Edge issue 70, April 1999: Sega Rally 2 on the Dreamcast.
- Edge issue 160, March 2006: Sega Rally 2006 review (PlayStation 2, Japan, five out of ten).
- Edge issue 164, July 2006: Sega Racing Studio’s own description (“established in April 2005”, near Solihull, working on Sega Rally).
- Edge issue 173, March 2007: Sega Rally preview with Guy Wilday as studio director of Sega Racing Studio.
- Edge issue 181, November 2007: Sega Rally review (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows; Sega Racing Studio; deforming surfaces; the original cars; seven out of ten).
- Edge issue 220, November 2010: Guy Wilday as former head of Sega Racing Studio and “the man behind the Colin McRae Rally series and the 2007 Sega Rally rebirth”.
- Edge issue 223, January 2011: interview with Sega Amusements Europe (Sega Rally 3 developed in parallel with the home game).