Grew up in the arcades playing the likes of Donkey Kong, Defender and Centipede so when in 95 these big racing seat contraptions turned up on the scene was naturally keen to give them a blast (had just started work so could now afford the hugely expensive $1 per credit hehe) many many many $$ later I was completing all 4 stages (the 4th being a bonus) and enjoying crushing people in Multiplayer
A few years down the track and after having Sega Rally on the PC but being a bit "meh" about the experience saw Sega Rally - Revo starting to be advertised around the place and with a demo out decided to kill some more of my bandwidth cap and grab it down
The intro is nice and basic, no extended cut scenes or advertsing of the 50 different companies that went into making the game which seems to be the trend now (no intel/amd, ati/nvida bollocks either) choose your track, choose you car and your into it....no complicated race setup options, suspensions, tyres etc...this is an arcade racer meaning you get to spend more time racing than doing car setups
Into the race and damn its shiny, graphics are superb....race start and oh yea this is fun...the cars are in a permanent drift with mud and dirt flying all over the show feels very much like the arcade version, can do a bit of wall riding round corners but the challenge soon becomes knocking off that elusive 1/10th around the course and while not killing off all your speed it does make a dent enough to start trying to avoid them pretty quickly
One cool thing I did notice and had to do a bit of reading on was the track surface, as you tear around the track the track is updated with ruts on dirt and rubber laid down on tarmac.....drive the same lines the next lap and you'll get better cornering as the ruts/rubber left the previous lap will help you on the next, this also makes life fun after a few laps when tight corners become rutted all over the place and keeping a smooth line becomes a bit of a tricky affair
Overall was a little skeptical about Sega Rally - Revo when I started it up but think the game could well be an addition to the game shelf in the very near future
