As anyone who played the original arcade game back in the mid 1990s would attest, Sega Rally has always had a certain charm to it. Having dug out my Sega Saturn from the distant corner it had been buried in for the past half decade, a sustained session of play brought back classic memories of knocking about in the local arcade back when I couldn’t grow a beard and still considered Pink Floyd to be music for old people. I probably shouldn’t do the former and the latter may indeed be correct, but what time hasn’t changed is just how great a simple, pick-up-and-play arcade racer can be.

That is mostly due to them being the perfect remedy for a tough day at work, or a fantastic companion piece to something more complicated and long-winded. The new Sega Rally, arriving in some kind of mud-splattering handbrake slide, perfectly slots itself right into the comfort zone of being an addictive, heckishly fun experience, easily picked-up but mastered only with significant time investment. Oh, and it’s got Imprezas in it. Blue ones. With shiny gold alloys. Sold!

In fact, a lot of the staple diet which you’d expect to be fed on in an arcade rally title has made it to the table: the Imprezas, the garish rock/jazz fusion background music, the ever-so-slightly annoying co-driver voice and the mixture of different circuits set in classic rally environments. It’s an old favourite spiced up with a tasty new zing, rather like steak and chips with pure harbenaro sauce dumped all over the top.

Initial experiments with the game will more-than-likely catch you slightly off guard, with the handling feeling a little on the floaty side. Having grown accustomed to the more grippy, simulation/arcade mixture that Project Gotham and Forza chuck at you will no doubt see you flailing around briefly whilst the opposing five cars disappear off into the dust-filled distance, at which point you’ll pause and wonder what it’s all about.

What it is all about, primarily, is flinging your car into corners at appropriate speed and then planting your finger on the throttle trigger, launching yourself towards the next straight. It’s about keeping that same finger jammed down on aforementioned throttle whilst throwing your vehicle through twists, turns, curves and jumps. It’s fantastically instinctive arcade fun, and it’s as fun as you remember it being. Learning each of the circuits the game offers will allow you to become more familiar with good routes, and to learn how to position your car for each twist and turn. If there were one word that can sum up Sega Rally, it would be fun.

It’s a big pile of fun too, with plenty of modes to slide your way around. The primary of these is the Challenge mode, which sees you racing in a number of mini championships of increasing difficulty on a number of surfaces. The circuits themselves are well designed and provide a healthy balance of variety, with some dusty safari stages giving way to slippery snow tracks via the odd mixture of tarmac and mud. Each surface has its own unique method of navigation, and learning these will shave crucial seconds off your race times.

Something similar to all circuits, no matter what surface they are, is that the ground cuts up in a similar manner to what we were introduced to in MotorStorm a few months ago. Whilst this doesn’t quite mean that each race is a magical mystery tour as the back of the box leans toward indicating, it does leave you with the task of finding an appropriate way around each corner after lap one, using or avoiding the trenches and skimming around newly-created puddles. It’s something that certainly adds a new dimension to proceedings and when used properly to your advantage can make the difference between winning and losing, so getting the practice miles in helps.

In Challenge mode, getting these practice miles is no problem at all as the game is practically bursting with events to pile on through. Doing so unlocks further championships, cars and liveries, and with some classic Group B rally cars in there for good measure (including the grin-inducing 205 T16) there’s a bit of variety chucked in too, so there’s great incentive to keep plugging away. It goes back to the point I made earlier regarding arcade games in general – Sega Rally is addictive by nature, and the rewards are pleasing.

Obviously, being an arcade racer means that there’s no sign of damage to be seen, although the vehicles do get marked up and splattered with dirt and mud thought the races. It also means that for the most part the AI of your opponents is completely absent, satisfying themselves with zooming around on their ideal line no matter if you or another car happen to be occupying the same piece of turf. As with most titles of this ilk, racing against the other cars on track is of secondary importance to navigating your way safely around the scenery, so it’s fair to say that it doesn’t grate as much as it could.

Elsewhere, the game offers players the chance to meet up with each other and pelt around to their hearts’ content, with the option of adding in a couple of AI opponents if you’re a little short on competition. If you’re a little tired of taking on man and machine there’s also a Time Trial effort, which is exactly as it says on the tin and allows for the posting and downloading of ghost records to chart yourself against. Those lacking in any patience whatsoever are also offered a Quick Race option so they can choose from any combination of circuit and car type and just go for it.

The glacier cherry sat atop the ice cream is that Sega Rally also looks fantastic, with all kinds of mud-splattering, dust-kicking effects loaded in for good measure. The way the circuits tear apart as the cars travel around is satisfyingly dirty and mucky too, with the cars themselves getting suitably grubby as they zoom around. The option to watch a race replay is as welcome as ever, and overall the only nail in the tyre is that the game contents itself running at a smooth 30fps rather than being able to run at 60.

Still, it’s hardly a show-stopping issue. The main thing that you take away from every session you spend on the new Sega Rally is that sometimes simplicity is a good, good thing indeed, and that it’s heart-warming to still see such a blatant arcade title being as fun and as addictive as they were a decade ago. Anyone wanting that quick racing fix should certainly pick it up, but it deserves to be recognised by so much wider an audience than that. Take it for a spin, folks, and you won’t be disappointed.