Autoblog

Back in the day, I spent over $400 on a Sega Saturn and a copy of Sega Rally GT Championship. A solid week was spent chucking a Toyota Celica GT rally car around a muddy course before I promptly returned the console and got my money back. It was clear back then that the Sega Saturn was not the next-gen console we were expecting (though it did have its moments). Nevertheless, my week at home with Sega Rally GT Championship was memorable.

Sega has stopped selling hardware and focuses solely on its software now, which means the return of Sega Rally Championship will happen on both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (What, no Wii?). The new game is scheduled for a Fall 2007 release date (probably October) and will be called SEGA Rally Revo when it arrives in stores.

Yours truly has been playing Forza 2 now for weeks (gamertag: Autoblog), but SEGA Rally Revo has some new features that will likely occupy more attention for months. Being a rally game, there is of course a varied selection of terrain including dirt, gravel and pavement, as well as different weather like rain and snow. Unlike any game before it, however, SEGA Rally Revo will feature "real-time terrain deformation", which means that the muddy rut you left on the last hairpin will be there on your next lap to dynamically affect your second pass. As SEGA says, no two laps can ever be the same since the track deteriorates under the extreme abuse of having a dozen high-powered rally cars tear it up.

Check out these two development videos to see these new features in action (second after the jump), and you can also view still shots from the game by visiting this gallery at our sister-site Joystiq.

[Source: Joystiq, YouTube]

Sega, the once heavyweight console maker now buried deep beneath the letters Wii, X, and PS, still pulls its weight in the arcade arena. Sega's Joypolis in Odaiba, Japan has an Initial D driving game based on the anime series that has the bodies of three actual cars mounted in front of a 90-inch screen. The cars don't have engines, but they sit on tilting frames, and include an RX-7, a WRX, and a Toyota AE86, which you can throw tilt around any of three courses. The game costs $5, but the cars are only there for the summer, so book those tickets to Nippon now.

Thanks for the tip, Judd!

[Source: Gizmodo]