In the mid ‘90s, SEGA Rally Championship was one of the most iconic racing games around. It was an integral part of the booming arcade scene; a demonstration of just what could be done with the rapidly changing 3D-focused hardware. It was fast, smooth and handled like a dream.

Still so pretty.

Under the bonnet

“ SEGA Racing Studio was the first of several high profile studios to close or collapse over the next three years, including Free Radical, Bizarre Creations and Realtime Worlds.

Kick it in the guts, Barry!

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A rollicking alpine run.

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So what was so great about it?

Advanced Rut Technology.

The 0-60 words or less

Fast forward to 2007 and SEGA Rally’s star was waning somewhat. The 1999 Dreamcast port of SEGA Rally 2 was but a distant memory, and – for whatever reason – SEGA Rally 2006 on PS2 was only released in South Korea and Japan. What the series needed was an incredible reboot. A game that would be both a technical showcase and a thrilling, super smooth return to form for SEGA Rally.That game, my friends, was SEGA Rally Revo (or just SEGA Rally, depending on where you live), and not only did it seemingly sink without a trace, it was also at least partially responsible for killing the studio that was set up to create it.SEGA Rally Revo was created by SEGA Racing Studio, a new British development house that was formed in 2005 for the sole purpose of creating quality racing games for SEGA. It was an attempt to put renewed emphasis on what had been a core part of SEGA’s stable in the past, but also to pass the torch to a Western perspective. Could a studio boasting members from outfits like Codemasters and Criterion help SEGA regain relevance in the racing oeuvre? I gave it 8.8 , saying it was “close to a perfect reinvention of the series.”) but sales figures mustn’t have been, as SEGA announced the studio’s closure in April 2008 – before SEGA Rally 3’s arcade debut in late June. Shortly after SEGA’s announcement, Codemasters acquired the studio, keeping on 40 of the 60+ staff members. A small team also stayed within SEGA, becoming a Technology Group The closure was a rude shock, and reflective of both the competitive climate for racing games and of the development scene in the UK. SEGA Racing Studio was the first of several high profile studios to close or collapse over the next three years, including Free Radical (which was acquired by Crytek), Bizarre Creations and Realtime Worlds.In terms of the racing landscape, SEGA Rally Revo was going up against the likes of Test Drive Unlimited, Need for Speed: Carbon and MotorStorm from 2006, and Forza 2, Colin McRae: Dirt, Project Gotham Racing 4 and Need for Speed: ProStreet in 2007. Burnout Paradise was just around the corner too. Arcade racing, then, had morphed into something more involved (and open-world in many cases), while series’ like Forza and Gotham had set high standards for content.It was a busy time for racing fans, and while Revo actually tried to package up a pretty sizeable offering, its arcade heritage meant that it was very much reliant on gamers being willing to take a leap of faith in the game’s value. The days of paying full price for slight arcade thrills , after all, were long gone.SEGA Rally Revo may have ultimately been an ill-fated project, but it’s probably my favourite game in the series. It’s clear that SEGA Racing Studio had a very clear vision for how this game should look and how it should feel, and it really captures the essence of the series. The handling is immediately accessible and fun, the sense of speed is excellent, and the visual design is just fantastic. Some of the courses in this game look impossibly good – I particularly love how well SEGA Rally Revo realises its Tropical and Alpine environments. They’re just so lush and hyper-real.Revo has another technical wow factor, and that’s deformable terrain. The cars carve out paths in the dirt, mud and snow, which – MotorStorm aside – was a pretty mindblowing effect at the time and still looks good today. It also has a direct impact on gameplay, as sticking to the ruts theoretically means you have more traction and are thus faster.Revo makes a strong first impression, then, and follows up on it with a daunting-looking Championship mode, which is broken into three broad classes: Premier, Modified and Masters, each of which has its own sets of cars. Within each of those are four leagues and within each of those are three sets of three races. There’s a lot to be going on with, in other words, although it’s a little deceiving. Each of the five settings (Safari, Alpine, Canyon, Tropical and Arctic) only has a handful of courses, each of which can be raced forwards and backwards.Instead, the challenge is in escalating difficulty and in adjusting to the different styles of rally cars across the different classes. It’s an approach that doesn’t quite work. The structure of each race event is unforgiving – each is comprised of three courses, with points awarded based on your place in each, and no restarts. It’s not too long until you’re racing against highly competitive AI, where you can spend the entire race trying to get through the mid-section of the pack and never even see the car that’s in first place.It’s a bit of a clash against the game’s arcade sensibilities, demanding you know each of the three courses in a set inside and out (compounded by the Arctic tracks which are flat, icy and not nearly as much fun as the others), and ultimately leaves SEGA Rally in a murky middle ground.This is a game, after all, that has 34 different cars to unlock and use, but no transparency on the performance differences between them. All you can do is choose between manual and automatic, and between an "off road" set-up or "tarmac" - the latter having higher top speed but slipperier performance on loose surfaces. Forget tuning - you don't even get a baseline indication of why you should use one car over another.That's fine for a straight-up arcade racer, but SEGA Rally has pretensions of being more than that.Butting your head against AI just isn’t that great an experience – particularly after the exhilarating first few hours, but a long career mode was obviously an expectation for this as a boxed release and this was how the team decided to tackle it, alongside other modes like online racing for up to six players and splitscreen. Ultimately SEGA Rally Revo would have been a better product for the end user if it was shorter, cheaper and focused purely on well-judged arcade thrills.SEGA ultimately agreed, releasing SEGA Rally 3 – this game’s arcade spin-off – on XBLA and PSN as SEGA Rally Online Arcade in 2011. It has since been delisted, which is a damn shame given how much fun the core gameplay is.SEGA Rally Revo was a reboot done (mostly) right. It certainly did a fantastic job capturing the fluid, gloriously fast and slippery handling players associated with the series, but at the same time injected some cool tech and superb art direction to really make it leap off the screen. If you’re an arcade racing fan – or a fan of SEGA Rally – do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of this on PS3 or 360 if you see it for cheap. It holds up remarkably well.Revo should have been the game that kicked SEGA Rally back into gear, but instead it left a muddy, torn up path in its wake.

Tacho Tuesday is IGN’s weekly look back at some of the most memorable racing games ever made. Previous instalments covered Colin McRae Rally WipEout and Ridge Racer . Got a proposal for a racing game you’d like us to dig up and check out again? Track down Luke and Cam on Twitter: @MrLukeReilly and @jazzebration . All suggestions are welcome!