TGS 2002: Hands-on: Sega Rally GBA

We had a chance to check out the Tokyo Game Show demo of Sega Rally for the Game Boy Advance. It appears that the game will include most of the options found in other home versions of the game such as the championship and time attack modes. In the championship mode, you'll get to race through a set of tracks, making your way to the head of the pack over the course of several races. The time attack mode lets you quickly test out your skills on a specific track.

Visually, Sega Rally looks surprisingly good. The tracks are constructed in full 3D, and while the clipping and texture quality problems are pretty severe, it's still a technically impressive game for the Game Boy Advance. The car appears to be just a sprite and it unfortunately seems to have only one or two frames of turning animation, which makes the turning effect in the game feel incredibly fake or loose. Indeed, one of Sega Rally's trademarks is its incredibly long powerslides, and that portion of the game isn't really present in the version being shown here.

We'll have more on the game soon.