On this day 30 years ago, the first edition of the cult racing game Sega Rally Championship for the Sega Saturn console of the time appeared in Europe.
In the first half of the nineties, SEGA was dominant in the genre of serious driving games. Their hits Virtua Racing and Daytona USA laid the foundation for racing in 3D environments, and then in 1995 followed Sega Rally Championship. The game first appeared on arcade machines, and then we welcomed it in Europe on the Sega Saturn console and played it exactly 30 years ago.
Sega Rally Championship was the most realistic rally playable at the time. It was the first video game that simulated driving on different surfaces such as asphalt, gravel and mud. The car behaved differently on each of these surfaces and this was an innovation that became the basis of all subsequent rally games.
This was the first game that simulated the behavior of cars when driving on several different types of surfaces.
The driving model itself in SRC was something between a simulation and an arcade, and it was for a long time reference model for fun driving with a touch of realism. The weight of the vehicle was felt when steering, but not so much that it was impossible to perform a good drift.
Sega Rally Championship was an extremely successful game and one of the first driving games to sell more than a million copies. Much more important than that, it inspired later rally games, first and foremost the legendary Colin McRae Rally which offered a similar experience to players on the PlayStation.
As for SRC as a series, we had a total of five games, three of which were from the main series and an attempted reboot from 2006. Unfortunately, these games are no longer available for sale today.