"Racing at its Best!!!"

A fun game at but where’s it all at? There are only 3 levels just like Daytona USA and that really disappoints me. The graphics in Sega Rally look pretty good just like Playstation graphics. They are clippy but that’s pretty obvious for all 32 bit systems. Controlling the game is simple and really easy. The sounds and music sound great and really go with the game. They seem to try to copycat Daytona USA but it doesn’t quite have the impact of Daytonas music. The game has only 3 levels and 2 cars to pick between and that’s quite a limited choice, which makes the game get boring extremely fast. Sega Rally is pretty simple and probably won’t take very long to beat and once it starts to get easy just use the difficulty option to spice it up a little.

Photo Finish
You enter this race feeling confident. And why not? You’ve spent endless hours perfecting even the most difficult curves, until you felt you could run the race blindfolded. All that training, all that time in the cockpit comes down to this race: the Sega Rally Championship. You manage to make it through the first couple of courses, though no without incident. The hairpin turn in the forest slows you down, but luckily you make the checkpoint. Thanks to the walls, it looks like you crew has some work to do when this one’s all over. But worry about that later. Right now you’re gunning for the finish line. All of the others have fallen behind, except one, and he’s hungry for the championship. It’s you and him, neck and neck, steel screaming against steel. He waits a moment too long to shift gears coming out of the final turn, and that’s all you need. You floor the accelerator, and beat him by a foot. Victory is Yours!

CONTROL **9**

The D-pad is used to steer the car, A button to brake, and the B button to accelerate. Very simple and if you’re using a manual transmission the L and R buttons are used to shift up and down. If the car doesn’t seem to turn fast enough you can change that in the options menu, which is really convenient, cause there’s lots of tight turns to navigate through. The original Saturn controller works well and does a great job at navigating through menus and racing on the track.

MUSIC / SOUND **8**

There’s plenty of music and sound in this game to keep you intertained. The music sounds great if you can hear it over the engine. The music gets the adrenaline going and keeps it going all the way through a race. The sounds are pretty limited to the sounds while going through option menus to the clunk when you hit the wall. The voice in the game sounds good but seems to get a little to repetitive. Overall Sega did a good job here but the should have found a new concept instead of copying Daytona USA.

GRAPHICS / LEVEL DESIGN **10**

The graphics look great and almost better than any PSX game out there. Sure they may be clippy and some pop up but every and I mean every 32-bit game has this problem with it. The cars are nicely detailed and look great most of the sponsors on them can be read also which tells that the graphics aren’t that bad. The levels are really cool looking and have all sorts of things in them from spectators to a helicopter even. They look great and they have quite a bit of detail to them. Put some nice looking cars and some really cool levels and what do you get but a graphically splending game.

REPLAYABILITY **5**

Where is this at? Sure there’s a 2-player mode and it’s fun but with only 3 levels to choose from and only 2 cars it also makes that get boring really fast. There’s not really anything to keep you interested in this game after you win the championship so it gets boring fast. The 2-player mode is nice thing to have cause without it this game wouldn’t be anything.

CHALLENGE **HIGH**

The game has a difficulty setting, which will make it hard for any racing fan. The option is a nice feature to keep yourself challenged all the way through 3 levels of racing that lasts about 2 and a half minutes. It won’t take too long to get 1st place and win the championship.

OVERALL **8**

A good game but like mostly all other racing games on the Saturn they are too short and don’t have enough options for tracks and vehicles. You can probably find this game for a little of nothing and its worth that just don’t expect to be playing this 24/7.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/08/01, Updated 08/14/02