SEGA surprises us by announcing for this year a new SEGA Rally, exclusively available for download on both XBL and PSN. SEGA Rally Online Arcade, as the name suggests, will put the emphasis on online races with a up to 5 players multiplayer mode. So here are the first images and you'll find a little more info in the press release.
SEGA® of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe Ltd. today announced that SEGA Rally Online Arcade™, a new HD title inspired by SEGA Rally Revo™ and SEGA Rally 3™, will be racing onto PlayStation® Network and Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft in 2011. SEGA’s arcade and console favorite will include a collection of new features, including the ability for gamers to race their friends online!
“We’ve blended our hit arcade racing series with the best elements from the console versions to bring our fans the SEGA Rally experience in compact, downloadable format,” said Haruki Satomi, Vice President of Digital Business at SEGA. “Whether they’re new to the SEGA Rally series or they’ve participated in countless races over the years, we’re confident everyone will enjoy the wide variety of features included in this fan favorite.”
SEGA Rally Online Arcade brings back all the features players could want from the popular arcade and console racers, including Championship Battle mode and Time Attack, while adding an exciting online racing mode that lets players battle it out with up to five drivers around the world. Featuring a brand new achievement system, 13 rally cars to choose from and online leaderboards, SEGA Rally Online Arcade will deliver lap after lap of intense rally action when it arrives on consoles in 2011.
All comments (7)
On XBLA though things come into focus better, and if people buy stuff on XBLA they're no strangers to online. That was technically the good thing about Outrun Online Arcade, but it was a vastly inferior version to Coast 2 Coast on the Xbox both in terms of performance and content. The difference there was that Outrun 2 wasn't available for the 360, and Live support for old Xbox titles was shut down, actually lending the XBLA version some additional purpose.
I bet Sega Rally will be stripped down from the retail release too, but the boon is certainly that you'll find people to race on this.
It's just that flaunting the game again just kinda brings back hopes and dreams from when Sega put together Sega Racing Studio, a hugely ambitious team consisting of ex- Colin McRae and Rallisport Challenge dudes that developed their own tech for Sega Rally initially, to be used for other classic Sega racing IP eventually. Sega Rally didn't sell at all, and it's way too naive to actually work as a proper retail release now for prior stated abitrary numbers and content reasons, but it was nevertheless a hugely disappointing thing that Sega shut SRS down. They really *got* the arcade sensibility of Sega, too. :(
I know lots of those people ended up at Codies, but I suppose the tech is stuck in limbo, and so are those planned Sega revivals like Hang On and Daytona.