''V-Rally 2'' (''Need for Speed: V-Rally 2'' in North America for the PlayStation version and ''Test Drive V-Rally'' in North America for the Dreamcast version) is a

racing video game Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic rac ...

developed by

Eden Studios Eden Studios was a commercial recording facility in west London. It opened in 1967, originally at 11 Eden Street in Kingston upon Thames (now under the Eden Walk shopping centre), before moving to 20-24 Beaumont Road in Chiswick in 1972. It was ...

and published by

Infogrames Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA) is a French video game holding company headquartered in Paris. Its subsidiaries include Atari Interactive and Atari, Inc. It is the current owner of the Atari brand through Atari Interactive. Bec ...

for

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...

Dreamcast The is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998, in Japan; September 9, 1999, in North America; and October 14, 1999, in Europe. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, N ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. It was originally planned for release as a

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and Au ...

title, but was cancelled during the early development phases of the game and was never officially announced.

Gameplay

The game features rally cars that competed in the

1999 World Rally Championship season The 1999 World Rally Championship was the 27th season of the FIA World Rally Championship. The season consisted of 14 rallies. Tommi Mäkinen won his fourth drivers' world championship driving for Mitsubishi, ahead of Richard Burns and Didier Au ...

. There are 26 cars in Championship Edition and 27 in Expert Edition. There are over 80 original tracks which represent all of the rallies of the 1999 season, excluding

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

and

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

. The game modes include a time trial mode, an arcade mode which follows the traditional style of arcade games, V-Rally Trophy where the player competes against 3 AI opponents to see who can get the least time in all of the rallies. The championship mode follows the actual example of

rallying Rally is a wide-ranging form of motorsport with various competitive motoring elements such as speed tests (often called ''rally racing),'' navigation tests, or the ability to reach waypoints or a destination at a prescribed time or average speed. ...

with different stages in the rallies featured in the game. V-Rally Trophy and Championship Mode feature 3 distinct championships: European, World and Expert. Weather conditions like

snow Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...

rain Rain is water droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then fall under gravity. Rain is a major component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides water f ...

, and rallying in daytime,

sunset Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth (except the North and South poles), the equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spring ...

and

night Night (also described as night time, unconventionally spelled as "nite") is the period of ambient darkness from sunset to sunrise during each 24-hour day, when the Sun is below the horizon. The exact time when night begins and ends depends o ...

are included. The racing tracks are essentially stored as curved lines in 3D space. Instead of designing and storing the entire track environment as a 3D model, the

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...

generates each track segment based on the 3D line and several parameters, such as track theme, weather, incline/decline, degree of curvature etc. There is also a track editor where the player can design their own rally tracks. There is Multiplayer mode which supports up to 4 Players. The PlayStation version of the game features support for

DualShock The DualShock (originally Dual Shock; trademarked as DUALSHOCK or DUAL SHOCK; with the PlayStation 5 version named DualSense) is a line of gamepads with vibration-feedback and analog controls developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the Pla ...

analog controllers and

Namco was a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company, headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo. It held several international branches, including Namco America in Santa Clara, California, Namco Europe in London, Na ...

neGcon The , stylized as neGcon, is a motion-based video game controller manufactured in 1995 by Namco for the PlayStation. One of the first third-party peripherals for the system, the controller is connected by a swivel joint, allowing the player to twi ...

and Jogcon racing controllers.

Development

Interviewed by '' Official Dreamcast Magazine'' producer Oliver Raffard said that the development team were inspired by "'' GP1'' for the sensation f driving the realism and the choice of tunings; ''

Out Run (also stylized as ''OutRun'') is an arcade driving video game released by Sega in September 1986. It is known for its pioneering hardware and graphics, nonlinear gameplay, a selectable soundtrack with music composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi (comp ...

'' for the fun and arcade spirit; and '' Rally Masters'' for the handling".

Reception

The Dreamcast version received "favorable" reviews according to the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. In Japan, where the PlayStation version was ported for release under the name and published by

Spike Spike, spikes, or spiking may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Books * ''The Spike'' (novel), a novel by Arnaud de Borchgrave * ''The Spike'' (book), a nonfiction book by Damien Broderick * ''The Spike'', a starship in Peter F. Hamilto ...

on January 27, 2000, ''

Famitsu formerly ''Famicom Tsūshin'', is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly formats as well as in the fo ...

'' gave it a score of 27 out of 40. Max Everingham of '' NextGen'' said of the latter console version in its January 2000 issue, "It looks good, it plays fine, and it has a lot of tracks. Only a few annoying quirks keep it from really flying." Ten issues later, however, Jim Preston called the former console version "A colorful, fun, and realistic driving sim." ''

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

'' gave the PlayStation version eight out of ten, saying that it was "Not perfect ..but certainly closer than most other PlayStation driving games are likely to get." ''

GamePro Gamepro.com is an international multiplatform video game magazine media company that covers the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software in countries such as Germany and France. The publication, GamePro, was originally la ...

'' said that the same console version "walks a fine line of bridging a rally racing sim with arcade fun. The game has some tweaking options available, but mostly it's just about learning the ropes and driving, driving, driving. Easily the top of the class in rally racing games for the home console and not likely to be topped (except maybe graphically by ''

Sega Rally 2 ''Sega Rally 2'' is an arcade racing game developed by Sega AM Annex for the Model 3 arcade hardware. It is the sequel to 1994's ''Sega Rally Championship''. The game was first released in arcades in February 1998, and was later ported by Smilebi ...

'' for the Dreamcast)."

Notes

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1999 video games Dreamcast games Infogrames games Cancelled Nintendo 64 games Multiplayer and single-player video games Need for Speed games Off-road racing video games PlayStation (console) games Rally racing video games Spike (company) games Test Drive Video games developed in France Video games set in Argentina Video games set in Australia Video games set in Corsica Video games set in England Video games set in Finland Video games set in Indonesia Video games set in Italy Video games set in Monaco Video games set in New Zealand Video games set in Portugal Video games set in Spain Video games set in Sweden Video games with user-generated gameplay content Windows games Eden Games games de:V-Rally#V-Rally 2