Fond memories. It's on my old system and I was thinking of pulling that system out of the closet to play the game. The driving model wasn't the best, but it was the proper rally experience. I want to drive whole rallies with many stages. I want to drive 45 minute stages or longer with pacenotes. It's realistic. 'Rallying' is all about pushing it to the edge without letting the car get away from you. There has been many a times when I'm "in the zone" but it's so easy to push it the tiniest fraction too far. You'll pay the price for that. There has been many a stage and rally where I'm limping the car home just to finish. Either way, the intensity is high and it's not unusual to be drained after a good stage. I also liked how you had to select and prioritize the work your team will do in the limited time in service. Great experience overall. Lately, these "rally games" in which you drive a single stage for 3 minutes are not "rally" at all for me.

Just a note though, I can hardly understand the male co-driver given that I'm an American. He has quite the thick British accent. I do understand the female co-driver enough and I use her exclusively.

Lastly, when I was playing this game constantly many years back, I reskinned the hyundai tiburon to match the cars driven by Paul Choiniere and Noel Lawler for Libra Racing in the SCCA Pro Rally here in the U.S.

Yeah, this game and its predecessor (Network Q RAC Rally) were my introduction to rally gaming.

After the length of the stages I was never really impressed with anything else. The Colin McRae series was fun but the short stages left me wanting more.

I found a couple of gameplay videos. I think I'm going to make it a "weekend project" to get this game working again.

I got it working and it didn't take nearly as much work as I thought.

It's just as intense as I remember. While the driving physics might not hold up in comparison to a lot of modern titles, the experience is just as strong. It's very, very difficult to complete some of these stages not just quickly, but with a minimum of damage to the car. You don't get much time at service to work on them and they DO break to the point of retirement.

How did you get it going Lugnut? I'm hoping my copy will arrive today

EDIT:Just arrived and installed perfectly on Win764

The icons on the homescreen are all messed up but the game works fine. Shame it doesn't support multiple controllers or widescreen but that's not suprising really. The stages are simply amazing and just as good as i remember even if the physics leave a little to the imagination. Graphics are dated but it still looks decent considering when it was made. Engine noises are pretty bad but it does have the best backfire noise ever . Certainly no RBR but it sure is fun and a few modern titles could learn a lot from this. Great to play it again.)

This is inspiring me to dig out some more golden oldies!

I'll have to attempt the reinstall.

Darren, I remember from way in the past that there was a sound mod for the game which improved it drastically. I'll see if I can find it.

Also, it must be nice to have tons of CPU and memory to let this baby fly as fast as it can...

EDIT: I'm assuming you're using a wheel. Does it work with it?

The sound mod would be cool

Yes, it's great to run it at max settings but unfortunately it doesn't support my navive res so it doesn't look as sharp as it could

I'm using a G27 and it works fine. I have my pedals and shifter connected as separate controllers so unfortunately it doesn't recognise those and i don't intend to reconfigure my entire setup but mapping buttons/paddles on the wheel works OK as a compromise.

I have great memories of this sim. Those long stages tired me out. I multiplayed with a couple of buddies and it was hilarious. I remember looking in the rearview mirror, while leading and making a hairpin turn, and a buddy of mine drove off the side of a cliff. I couldn't stop laughing.

I found the most recent patch as well as a number of other files on this site:

http://explosiveracing.net/rc/

It hasn't been updated in years but it's still active in terms of downloads.

nice find. They even have all my skins in their archive!