"A very good conversion of a great arcade racer..."

The release of Daytona USA onto the Saturn and the PC was a disaster, resulting in two ports that were unfaithful to the arcade version. Other racing games did not go especially well either with conversions (Virtua Racing had trouble and others such as Le Mans 24 and Daytona 2 were never released due to Gran Turismo's dominance). Fortunately, the port of Sega Rally is a different story. While not quite as good as the arcade version (60 fps and a fluent co-driver), it is a very good port. Let's have a look...

Graphics

Not as good as the arcade version obviously due to technical restrictions at the time (a Direct 3D patch later on as with Daytona CCE would have been nice), but a solid 30 frames per second (fps) and clean graphics. The game jumps frequently on newer computers, however. Try having another processor-intensive program running in the background to stop this.

Sound

The music is remixed but still good. The main sound effects are very suitable, but the co-driver voice isn't fluent as it is in the arcade version (why?). Overall, the sounds are fine.

Gameplay

Pretty much arcade-perfect. The handling is so close to the original you won't notice the difference. The number of tracks and cars is a tiny disappointment, you would probably expect more from a home game (Colin McRae Rally has 8 cars and about 60 stages, compared to this game's 3 cars and 4 tracks). The multiplayer with split-screen and even link-up is good although I haven't tried the link-up.

Lifespan

Like the arcade original, you will get bored eventually as the game is not that difficult as opposed to most other games, and as mentioned before there aren't that many features, but the game is immense fun until you do complete it.

Overall

As a game on its own, it's nothing really special but this is a faithful port of the original arcade game, which scores extra points. Well worth buying cheap if you don't know the arcade game, worth buying for much more if you know and love the arcade game. If only all Sega's racing games went the same way...

8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/07