Back in January, PlayStation finally added one of my childhood go-to racing games to the PS Plus Classics catalog: Rally Cross. I’m quite aware that titles like Jet Moto 2 and R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 are remembered more fondly than Sony’s first-party off-roader (they’re also on PS Plus, by the way, which is fantastic), because Rally Cross always felt more generic, at least on the surface.
But what Rally Cross lacked in style and personality, it made up for in fun physics, tight analog controls and a 4-player split-screen mode that ran like absolute garbage but was somehow… enjoyable? You haven’t lived until you’ve sat down with three of your best friends, a multitap and some Pizza Hut to duke it out over muddy jungle terrain at 15 frames per second. Low-tech bliss, and the two-player mode runs like butter, if you’re wondering.
If you’re unfamiliar with Rally Cross, I’d call it Sony’s answer to the excellent Sega Rally, without the energetic announcer or usual Sega arcade flair. It’s grittier, though. Less polish, which I think gives it a slight edge. The game only has six tracks, ranging from the tropical Islands course to the sprawling Gardens and torch-lit Mines tracks. The maps, which you can race forward and backward, admittedly have more personality than the unlicensed cars. There’s no Mountain Dew or Butterfinger branding here, unlike the Jet Moto games. Diabetes be damned.
Racing is fast-paced and often times hilarious thanks to the floaty physics engine. Yet another thing that sets this apart from Sega Rally, undoubtedly, alongside the ability to literally flip your car upside down, which you then have to then roll back over with the shoulder buttons. I know some people don’t care for the proprietary physics engine, but I think it’s probably the best part of Rally Cross.
The game released around the same time as Sony’s Dual Analog gamepad, and as such, supported much needed analog control. For those unaware, the Dual Analog was the enigmatic DualShock predecessor that sported longer handles and concave analog sticks. Still my preferred design to this day.
Unlike the Japanese version, our US variant nixed the vibration feedback, but the analog control was enough to vastly improve Rally Cross’s rudimentary digital input scheme. A cool thing was that once the DualShock came out in 1998, you could go back and utilize the vibration feature in Rally Cross. A notable retrofit, as it were.
If it seems like I know way too much about this somewhat forgotten PS1 racing game from 1997, it might be because I interviewed several members of the original development team for an October 2017 feature in an equally obscure video game magazine called RETRO. Yeah, I take my Rally Cross seriously. I have therapy tomorrow, thanks.
That being said, if you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, do yourself a favor and go check out this little gem from PlayStation’s early days, complete with trophies for that sweet achievement dopamine. I do hope this means we’ll see a Classics release of Rally Cross 2 at some point, even though I think it pales in comparison to the first entry. The controls are subpar, in my opinion, and they took out the atrocious four-player split-screen mode, something you can currently hate/enjoy with friends in the initial Rally Cross in the updated Classics library.
I’ve been playing it a bunch recently and it still feels splendid. Splashing through streams and mud pits at 100 miles per hour is just as great as it was almost thirty years ago. Wow, I’m old. Good lord.
Now, if you’ll, excuse me, I need to go Platinum this nostalgia bomb before the arthritis sets in.
