You may find it hard to believe, but before Rez, Child of Eden and Space Channel 5, Tetsuya Mizuguchi made a straight-faced arcade racing game. Looking at it now, it's hard, if not impossible, to see any of his trademark idiosyncrasies in it. The music isn't linked to the action, the cars are as close to photorealistic as possible… it's nothing like his recent work. Ah, but one trademark remains – sheer, genre-smashing brilliance. Let me tell you about the wonder that is Sega Rally.
In 1995, there were only a handful of major racing games in the arcades. Sega's own Virtua Racing had kick-started the rush to make realistic racers, followed by the texture-mapped Daytona USA and Namco's Ridge Racer. But if the latter two games set the benchmark for the arcade generation that followed, Sega Rally represents the pinnacle.
Above: Sega Rally's stars - the Lancia Delta and Toyota Celica, immortalised forever in this landmark racer
Who taught you how to drive?
The game's greatest achievement is its physics engine. You could argue it's too slidey and that everyone crashes the first time they attempt to navigate that right-hander by the zebra because the car's movement over loose gravel is exaggerated slightly. But this is an arcade game – as with Daytona, Ridge Racer and OutRun 2, the car handling has been exaggerated deliberately to make it fun, although Sega Rally keeps its roots in the real world way more than any other arcade racer I can think of.
You can lose control of the car simply by putting two wheels on a bump and turning away from it. The gravity and inertia here is exemplary. Let go of the controls on a hill and the car will roll down it until it hits an incline, whereupon it will slow to a halt and then start rolling back the other way. It's possible to spin the car with too much welly under acceleration and there's no such thing as the 'perfect' line. The track surface undulates so subtly, there's always a new option to try.
For instance, there's the three days I spent practicing on the Desert track for the World Record run a couple of years ago. Even after over a decade playing the game and all this ultra-concentrated practice, I still feel like I'm only just learning the track. I only feel like I've scratched the surface of what's possible on it.
Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-classic-game-appreciation-section-sega-rally/a-20110705122648856075
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