"You don't know what you've got till It's gone"

This port was born to be as close as the arcade original as it could be, having in mind the capabilities of the Saturn in front of the powerful model 2 board. Developed by Am#3 (Tetsuya Mizuguchi, also created the arcade) this title is a showcase of what a Saturn was capable of, back in the years we thought this machine couldn't do 3d, even if it wasn't programmed with 2.0 libraries.

This graphic engine should have been used for a higher amount Saturn games, put simply, this is one of the greatest stuff you can see on this system. It moves smooth and fast either, has a great car weight and speed feeling that moves on different tracks showing a lot of variety. Courses on Sega Rally aren't real at all but they have their personality, featuring different environments: desert, mud, pavement...

You can see on screen constant 30 fps, with good viewing distance (thanks to good designing as well), there's clipping as it should be and some vectors "dancing" at the bottom of the screen, but it's nothing you can blame for on an earlier 32 bit game. Mizuguchi wanted the player to feel he was driving a very heavy machine and he really succeeded on this feature too, thanks to the handling, psychics and sound.

Music and effects on Sega rally are also beautifully done. In music we have lots of hard rock tracks very well composed and inspired for each course and menu selection, giving the game some real life indeed. We can also select the tracks for each course and the balance between music and sound effects. You'll probably not get tired of music, but obviously not everybody will be pleased as well, that's impossible.

We also get sound effects from the co-driver and realistic car noises. Engine noises, turnings, crashes and surfaces are realistic and take us to a rally atmosphere, and co-driver gives us the instructions for the next turnings, not only the direction also the kind of turning or jump area, well coordinated with the course and we get also graphical advice.

The first issue on this game is getting ride of the 2 tons beast we've got on the screen, something that will take us more time than we could expect. Our first attempt will end crashing from one side to another to the point we'll notice that tapping the pad harder won't give us a chance to win.

Once we get on the first issue, we'll think how to take the different turns on the four courses (fourth is hidden), not an easy step too. But these two steps once mastered will give us a very special satisfaction, don't take them lightly, you'll have to be always very reactive on this one, one relax and you're off.

But our real challenge is the time, a constant fight to get the best lower time, and this game is so adjusted that a minor handling issue will be reflected on the time we're going to do, and this is the most rewarding of all, you can feel when you're doing good or right even if you're doing almost perfect.

Sega Rally, as a great arcade game, is about playability and fun and not realism even if it's a benchmark on this too. And as an arcade, this game has enough depth to give us fun for years. Control was really enhanced from the arcade machine, new features were added and a car tuning is also well implemented, so this game is by far better than the arcade machine in every feature except from graphics.

Sega rally give us everything from the arcade without missing anything, time attack and 2 players mode will give us fun for years to come even if we can finish the arcade mode on three minutes, and ghost mode will be our obsession and we'll be playing just for fun and getting lower and lower times forever. You'll notice veteran gamers just love this game even if it was released on 1995.

If you've got a Saturn you can't just not having this game, and for the bargain price it's got nowadays you have no excuse to just load this game and have fun. This game not only has redone rally games, it's a flawless game on it's own and inspired games like Colin Mc Rae rally. This is a standard for the system, for the genre and for any arcade game, also an addictive showcase for the Saturn and one of my top ten games of all time.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/06