Game Review: Sega Rally Championship

Game: Sega Rally Championship
Console: PC
Developer: Sega
Release Date: 11th October 1994

It's not very often that a game with very little content is able to wow its players into complete satisfaction with its gameplay alone, but Sega Rally Championship achieves this feat easily. Featuring just 3 main stages with a bonus stage for coming 1st at the end of the third, and two main cars, there's really not a lot of variety in terms of content, to explore. The arcade handling of the cars and the layout of the stages featured is simply sublime; fast paced rally action with exciting overtakes and a challenging goal of finishing 1st after just 3 stages.

The first stage, 'Desert' features corners of easy difficulty, the next stage, 'Forest' is a little more unforgiving and features a few difficult corners. The final main stage, 'Mountain' features many twists and turns and a tough uphill hairpin in its middle section. Finally the bonus hidden stage 'Lakeside' is the hardest of them all, featuring a lot of long corners which require expert braking to remain in the lead and win the overall rally, and game.

Graphically the game is very impressive when observed at speed; the grass and rocks rush by and the blurry textures seem almost to be a speed effect. At slower pace however, and at certain times in the game the textures are less impressive, looking dated and low res, and sometimes even popping in and out. The music featured in the game is excellent and really fits the fast paced mood and racing action, and conveys the classic Sega soundtrack feel.

Overall Sega Rally Championship is about the best players could wish for from a 1994 rally game; exciting racing and sounds, a good challenge and some nicely varied tracks are only held back by the lack in quantity, of content. It's a real case of quality over quantity, and this means that it's still enjoyable despite it's lack of depth.

Rating: 84/100
Grade: B