New Rally-X on XBLA

By Robert Purchese Published 2 January, 2007

Pac-Man learns to drive.

Rally driving doesn't wait for anybody, not even Jesus. So, while we were indulging in the Christmas festivities, retro-heads at Microsoft squeezed this 1981 classic online.

Released on 27th December for 400 Microsoft points, New Rally-X lets you turn back the years and enjoy its Pac-Man inspired gaming in glitzy HD.

Originally the sequel to Rally-X, the game challenges players to negotiate a maze, collect flags and avoid enemy vehicles. The flags increase in value as they are obtained, but reset to the base 100 points if you happen to die. To make things a little bit trickier, you also have a limited fuel supply. Once this runs down you'll slow to a crawl, becoming a sitting duck for the evil red cars.

The release also includes other features such as the Lucky Flag that rewards you points depending on the amount of fuel you have left, and the smoke-screen ability that stuns those pesky enemy drivers.

Unfortunately players seem far from impressed with this recent download, belching concerns that Microsoft should either concentrate on releasing newer and independent games, or make better choices about which archaic romps to regurgitate.

"I've had more fun falling down the stairs," claimed 'Wet Vein' on the Major Nelson blog-site, whilst 'XanderSan' rated it a whopping "Disappointment / 10."

Perhaps following Small Arms, RoboBlitz, and Assault Heroes was always going to be a tall order, but we can't help thinking that finishing a successful 2006 with New Rally-X was a little underwhelming.

What's more, it's not even available in Korea. Tsk!

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • #1 5 years ago

    Nice!

    There's not much that appeals on 360 but when I'm down a bros. house XBLA is the first thing I go to check out.

  • morriss #2 5 years ago

    It's really, really fucking awful. It makes Frogger llok like FFVXII.

  • Xerx3s #3 5 years ago

    So it will make frogger still look like shit then?

  • Steroyd #4 5 years ago

    I'm sure you can play Rally X on Tekken 5.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #5 5 years ago

    It's the combination of novadrome and new rally x that really hurts. Neither one is worth the download.

  • SomaticSense #6 5 years ago

    Shit.

    I think it says it all when this game is used as a loading screen on PSP Ridge Racer. And MS are charging for this?

  • Steroyd #7 5 years ago

    Namco also had a hand in this.

    MS will have to setup a sub studio of XBLA dedicated to original content or officially label their XNA games under a XNA studio or something.

  • SomaticSense #8 5 years ago

    Yeah you're right. I thought it was solely down to MS to decide the final pricing of the Marketplace games, but it only makes sense that both companies would consult each other regarding it.

    I just don't get why anyone is charging for this anyway. It would be interesting to see the sales figures regarding it, as surely no one would buy it no matter what the price after playing the trial version and already playing it for free on a number of other Namco games.

    I just can't believe they have the gall to charge any amount of money for something that they use as a loading screen a lot of the time in their 'proper' games. Same goes with Galaxia.

  • haowan #9 5 years ago

    They want to do one more release like this and drop dead.

  • YourMessageHere #10 5 years ago

    Lawks, you might imagine that Microsoft were in fact only out to make money by belching out shite software and don't really care about what people want, eh?

  • crazyhorse174 #11 5 years ago

    This really is pish.

  • smelly #12 5 years ago

    Out of interest (and no im not being a fanboy or anything here), how do the price of these retro games compare to retro games from the same era (nes) on the wii?

    Nes games on the wii cost $5 (which is double the price i'd be prepared to pay), just wondering what xbla retro games cost?

  • SBfistfun #13 5 years ago

    "I've had more fun falling down the stairs"

    Genius

  • holloguts #14 5 years ago

    I can't believe how sad XBLA has become. This is just trash, but worse is the fact that this type of pathetic tripe is now the normal on XBLA. How promising XBLA was going to be, and all we seem to be getting are games(?) that you would download for a mobile phone then delete after paying the 50p charge.

    XBLA is just turning into a dead donkey.