Remembering Sega Rally Championship – a '90s arcade legend, one-time Japan-exclusive, and coveted PS2 latecomer

Any arcade vet could tell you Sega Rally Championship was a big deal in the mid-'90s, vying with the likes of Ridge Racer for arcade-goers' loose change, and later providing one of the few great reasons to buy a Sega Saturn. It's a fantastic arcade-to-home translation that never made it onto PlayStation… well, not outside Japan. PlayStation owners had to wait a while, but importers had a '00s must-buy thanks to a surprise arcade conversion. 

Sega Rally 2006 was intended to be an anniversary celebration of the landmark original, appearing as a Japan-only PS2 release. However, this forgettable racer came with a disc entitled Sega Rally 1995 that was probably supposed to show how far the series had come in ten years by featuring a reproduction of the Model 2 arcade game. What it achieved instead was to highlight how much better the new game should have been. But unlike the PC and Saturn ports, this bonus disc is a conversion of the original arcade game itself. Since it never appeared anywhere else, you need a PS2 that can play Japanese discs, and pockets deep enough to tackle the secondhand market if you missed out. But it's worth the trouble.

Slick like Castrol

For the uninitiated, this is a short-burst rally racing arcade game from Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi. In it you must reach checkpoints to keep your timer alive, passing slower cars as you progress through three varied stages, with a secret fourth course to enjoy should you happen to win. In true Sega fashion, it's simple to understand and most people will at least make it to stage 2 on their first couple of goes, but it poses a monumental challenge if you want to actually win. And with the entire 'championship' series done and dusted in some four minutes, that means every second of action is maximised. 

The track design is S-tier. Every corner has something different to offer, whether it's nailing the line to slide flat-out around the Desert course's infamous 'zebra' corner at turn 3, nailing the left/right power-slides of the post-tunnel chicane on the Forest course, or steadying the car ready to handbrake turn into the hairpin on the Mountain track. The original arcade game is more than a quarter of a century old now, but is still better designed than any modern racing game you could mention. Instead of favouring super speed like many modern racers, Sega Rally gives a decent impression of speed thanks to the textured ground rushing under the bonnet cam, but actually moves slowly and deliberately, giving you time to monitor and control your car's slide through each corner. So few modern racers have that kind of confidence, opting for breathless pace instead. 

In this PS2 conversion, like the arcade original, you can either play the tracks in sequence or take three laps to practise just one, all against the clock. And PS2 shows its power, running at 60fps and with less draw-in even than the Model 2 arcade original. The iconic Castrol-liveried Toyota Celica is gorgeous, and the car physics are still excellent, even if the Saturn version remains a bit more flowing. Oh, and some HDMI up-scalers will make the chequerboard transparency of the windows look translucent, which is a bonus. You heard that right, 1995's best arcade hardware couldn't render tinted windows. Those were the days. You can plug in a Logitech wheel, but there is a dead zone that can't be changed in the menus, which is such a pity because otherwise you could make an arcade cabinet out of this. 

While R4: Ridge Racer Type 4's bonus disc offers a reasonable 'deluxe' version of Ridge Racer, Sega Rally 2006's bonus disc essentially brings an arcade game itself into your home, in better-than-arcade-perfect style. The fact this port didn't get an HD release like the Japan-only PS2 Nights Into Dreams conversion is frankly criminal. European gamers haven't been able to play Sega Rally on any console since Sega Saturn, and considering what a massive deal the game was, that's sad. If the licensed cars were replaced with lookalikes, it could still happen. Luckily, you don't need to understand Japanese to enjoy the thrill of the race. Race to your nearest bidding site.

This feature first appeared in PLAY magazine - Subscribe here to save on the cover price, get exclusive covers, and have it delivered to your door or device every month.