Turn Right: An Ode to Colin McRae Rally
Last weekend (May 3/4), it was reported that developer Codemasters, responsible for the Colin McRae Rally games since 1998, was going to immediately stop making all rally-racing games. It's a familiar story lately: Electronic Arts (EA) buys a company and strips away what made it special. With this in mind, I wanted to chat about when I played Colin McRae Rally for the first time.
Although I clearly remember playing Mario Kart 64 at an Electronics Boutique gaming store around 1997, it was Colin McRae Rally that made an impact on me when it came to 3D racing games.
Released in July 1998 for Sony PlayStation and PC, the game was part of several games I had been gifted, and at first, I had no interest. I had played some racing games before via some demo discs, but they all felt the same to me. However, one weekend, I decided to give Colin McRae Rally a go, and from then on, I couldn't stop playing. Whether it was the different feel of the cars, the detailed tracks, or the absurd cheats, it's still a game that's stuck with me, 27 years on.
"Turn Left"
You can go straight into a Rally race, or start Championship mode if you wish. Although the aim is to get the best time in every race against the other drivers, you won't see them, apart from a 'special race' duel that occurs at the end of a series of races in a country, or as its own category. You can choose from a variety of cars, but you can change their suspension, acceleration speed, the type of tyres, and lots more before you start a race. Being able to do this in 1998 was mind-boggling to me, as changing some of these attributes could be a massive factor in getting a best time in a race, or the worst.
Whether you're new to the game or a veteran, playing Colin McRae Rally is like playing the board game Operation. Both demand precision, steady hands, and calm nerves. One wrong move, and you may be all over the place. But that's where the fun is.
Playing each track has its own unique effects ā the United Kingdom features rain, accurately mirroring what it's like to drive around the country for much of the year. Yet your car has its windscreen wipers on, which you can see when in dashboard mode, complete with a driver on the steering wheel. Corsica and Indonesia have tracks set at night, with your chosen car's headlights on. But you won't be focusing on much of that. It'll be on the right side of the screen, trying to make sure you're in the green to make sure you're in first place. If you crash into some trees or make a turn too late, you may find yourself lagging behind and in the red.
"Straight roads are for fast cars, turns are for fast drivers"
There's a weird but great sense of challenge to the game, and the realism with your car helps with this. You see, as it drives on different terrain, different weather conditions, and of course, smashing into different objects, your car reflects that. Bumps will result in headlights or brake lights being destroyed, or the car's body being dented so much that the handling will be affected, causing you to lightly press on one of the directional pads to keep on the road.
It's the realism here that adds to the fun, and it's also what keeps you coming back to certain tracks in order to unlock new cars. I remember having a lot of trouble in Corsica, especially in Intermediate mode, but playing it now, there's something calm in playing Colin McRae Rally, especially with Nicky Grist, McRae's co-driver at the time, telling you which way to turn.
However, on the flip side of this, I can't talk about Colin McRae Rally without mentioning the cheats. These cheats are, simply, fantastic. You may have noticed in the screenshots by now that every car is flying with its wheels folded down, much like how the DeLorean Time Machine is in the Back to the Future films. This was mainly how I played the game after completing Championship mode, and I loved it. At the start of every race, you see the car levitate and the wheels fold down, exactly like the Delorean, and it never gets old for me.
But there's more! If you want to turn your car into green jelly, it's possible. How about pressing Select to have your car leap over a single haystack? Or setting every track at night? Or high-pitched mode from Grist? Or even being abducted by UFOs? There are simply too many to explain here, but if you can find a copy of Colin McRae, head to this link and enjoy the madness.
Granted, I made sure to ask for Colin McRae Rally 2.0, released in 2000, and it was a great time. But I preferred the original, and still do. Whether that's because of the absence of other cars on the track, the early-noughties aesthetic in the menus, or the lack of hover mode in this sequel, who knows? Yet there's something unique about the original game.
It's a shame that the end of an era from Codemasters is what made me revisit the game ā a remaster would have been amazing to see, especially on my Switch 2, but that dream's likely gone. However, it's a fantastic example of how great 1998 was for the Sony PlayStation, and how one game made me reapproach how fun and diverse 3D racing games could be, beyond Mario Kart 64 and Sega Rally.
Thanks for reading.
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