SEGA Rally for PSP

By Robert Purchese Published 13 June, 2007

New developer roped in.

SEGA has confirmed the new version of its filthy rally series will also be heading to PSP this September.

But unlike the next-generation versions it won't be developed in-house by SEGA Racing Studios. Instead it's FlatOut team Bugbear doing the honours, although apparently there will be little difference.

"Essentially it will have the same environments and cars as the version made at SEGA Racing Studios. And although it won't have fully deformable surfaces, it will have surface variations that effect handling, like driving over skid-marks created by other vehicles," a spokesperson for SEGA told Eurogamer.

"SEGA Racing Studio was set-up to make the most of the next-generation of technology using new and existing IP. We felt Bugbear's great technology and experience ticked all the right boxes to handle a PSP version of the new SEGA Rally."

You'll be able to race around picturesque rural locations both on your own, and against your friends in Wi-Fi multiplayer. SEGA insists none of the arcade charm will be lost on the PSP, thanks to its meaty screen size.

We strapped Dave McCarthy in for a test drive of SEGA Rally in April, and he emerged with glowing reports. "Watching SEGA Rally in action is an exhilarating and uplifting experience. And that, really, is pretty much the arcade essence of the 12-year-old original," he beamed.

Head over to our preview to find out more.

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 (11) Latest comment 5 years ago

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  • BadBoyBonner #1 5 years ago

    Hopefully it will be out before GT4 on the PSP ;-)

  • infoxicated #2 5 years ago

    Will it be another piss poor Sega port with flickering texture joins and last-gen graphics, I wonder?

    You know, like Virtua Tennis 3 on the psp...

  • Aretak #3 5 years ago

    Virtua Tennis 3 is excellent on the PSP, and looks extremely good considering the hardware limitations. Were you expecting it to look like the PS3 version?
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/07 @ 15:57

  • Hughes. #4 5 years ago

    Should be more fun than WRC, although that actually became okay once I'd enabled 333mhz mode.

  • Arcadiian #5 5 years ago

    SEGA don't seem to make many of their own games anymore.

    Most of what they have made has been a little shoddy, too.

  • andromeda #6 5 years ago

    @hughes

    WRC was excellent fun and yeah once you stick up the cpu to 333mhz it played like a dream...as do most games on the system. It's amazing to think that all games released are capped at 222mhz just because $ony produced a battery with such crappy life...try playing vice city stories for example at 333mhz; almost a different game..

  • infoxicated #7 5 years ago

    Aretak - you wont get a bigger PSP fanboy than me, but VT3 looks like shit. Unless you have a screen protector so thick you cant see that the players look like zombified burns victims or the flickering joins in their symmetrical faces during post-point cut scenes. What about the flickering/popping buildings in the pre-match scene-setting?

    Compare it with the quality of Smash Court Tennis 2 on the same system and it's pretty clear that Sumo Digital's talents lie with porting, not polishing.

    If I sound bitter it's because I am - the gameplay is great, it just looks awful.

    Edited by 1 at 13/06/07 @ 17:31

  • BBIAJ #8 5 years ago

    Christ on a bike, you could not ask for a better devco to be tasked with porting SEGA Rally!

    Must buy straight away, sod the reviews.

  • Ryze #9 5 years ago

    Quality. Race you all come this Sept!

    Unless they fuck it up.

    Regardless - join the OutRun 2006 group in time for the Autumn so I can bust all your asses all over the Internet!

    ryz

  • Ryze #10 5 years ago

    By the way... I'm using Safari on XP.

    Pages look lovely, but it disappears randomly with some websites.

    I can't online bank with it yet, but pages do look bloody lovely, and it's so Apple clean.

    Sony should get Apple to make their software - the PSP would be amazing.

  • ToAks #11 5 years ago

    Sumo Digital ported/converted/created Outrun 2006 C2C for ps2 and psp , one of the most played games in my house ever, simply stunning...saying that Sumo can't port would be wrong imo but indeed it wasnt just a port since they added and changed alot on ORC2C (for the better too imo).

    As to Bugbear, love the Flatout games they made!, really excited about this new SEGA RALLY game :)