Whenever I see that The Speed Channel is going to be broadcasting something that involves historic rally racing, one thing always comes to mind: "Cool!"

Whenever I see anything program listings for modern rallying events, though, I usually find myself thinking: "Hmmm ... wonder what else is on?"

That's the way I am about rallying -- from an academic standpoint, I've always admired the fact that rallying brings a lot of high-tech automotive technology into play in an environment that's very close to real-world driving conditions, but I always find those little classic European cars from an earlier era to be a lot more interesting. With this sort of detached interest in historic rallying, it's little wonder I got excited when I heard the first announcements about Bugbear's upcoming Rally Trophy sim (originally titled "Historic Rally Trophy").

Rally Trophy is the first rally simulation that attempts to model an historical era in rallying. Rather than modeling a specific year or a specific rally event, Rally Trophy loosely models eleven classic rally cars that tore up the rallying circuits from the 1960s to the early '70s. You can take these classics through 42 different tracks in 5 different countries during different seasons of the year at varying times of day in a variety of weather conditions ranging from daylight, sunset, snowfall, rain, storms, and fog. The part that looked the most promising, though, was the "breathtaking accurate and realistic car physics" promised by publisher JoWood Productions.

This all sounded very interesting to me already, but I was curious to see how it would measure up outside of the marketing hype, so I contacted Bugbear to see about obtaining a copy of their advanced demo version. They agreed, and I eagerly awaited its arrival.

Unfortunately, I received Rally Trophy V0.52a advanced demo version from Bugbear some months ago, but an illness and two deaths in the family effectively pulled me away from the sim racing world for a while. In the meantime, the official Rally Trophy demo came out not long after I received the advanced demo, and the retail version of the game was due out in stores not long after that, so I tabled my plans to do a preview of this highly-anticipated game. With the upcoming U.S. release of the game, though, I dusted off my plans to do a preview in order to help stir up some interest on this side of the pond.

From the moment I received it, Rally Trophy advanced demo really did capture my interest, and my anticipation for this game was only enhanced by the public demo when it was released. Judging by the demos alone, I can truly say that Rally Trophy is one game that really works for me as a driving/racing sim, and what I have seen so far only makes me want to see the full version all that much more.

The European release of Rally Trophy has already occurred, and there was a lot of talk on the Internet about it -- various racing sim forums, both here and elsewhere -- were filled with missives regarding the relative merits of Rally Trophy, and the folks who run the GPLRank site have even created a Rally Trophy Rank to add to the overall Rally Trophy experience and extend its longevity for the racing sim community.

The U.S. release lagged behind the European release - it is currently due to arrive in the U.S. and Canada around the first of March - which should have given the title plenty of time to generate some enthusiasm prior to its arrival on these shores. Unfortunately, though, the European release included a rather serious steering bug which caused much turmoil and muted much of the fanfare surrounding Rally Trophy's arrival. An official patch has been released to address the steering bug and other things, and the early reports indicate that the patch truly transforms an already remarkable game. The patch brought with it new encryption of the records file, which threatened to close down the Rally Trophy Rank site, but thankfully the records file encryption has already been cracked, and now not even that is a concern.

All the pre-patch turmoil took quite a bit of the initial shine off Rally Trophy as a whole, which is a true shame because even though I haven't had a chance to see how good or bad the retail version is (either with or without the patch), the advanced demo and the official release demo of the game have captured my interest in a way that few other sims have, and I am anticipating the U.S. release now more than ever.

As I said earlier, I�m not a real rally fan - it�s not that I don�t enjoy rallying, but rallying is just not that well known here in the U.S.. As far as sim rallying goes, I do own Mobil 1 Rally Championship, and I've played around quite a bit with the Colin McRae 2 and Rally Masters demos, but I've just never found any of these rally titles to be all that compelling overall.

The Rally Trophy demos have transformed my view of rallying, though, and now I actually find myself looking forward to even the modern World Rally Championship events on The Speed Channel.

Rally Trophy�s historic angle is what grabbed my interests initially, though, and in this respect the game definitely hits its mark for me. The vintage cars that I have seen in the demos capture the feel for the period very nicely - much the same as the cars in GPL capture the 1967 Grand Prix era.

As a period piece, Rally Trophy seems to work very nicely, but Bugbear�s early press information indicated that they were also planning to implement a cutting-edge physics engine that could potentially rival the granddaddy of all sim racing titles, Grand Prix Legends. Aside from the historical aspect, this was the portion of the game that interested me the most - and I�m sure that many readers are interested in the physics aspect as well.

But how does one compare a Ford Cortina, Volvo Amazon, Ford Escort MkI RS2000, or a Mini Cooper to a 1967 Grand Prix Lotus, a 2002 NASCAR stocker, or a 2001 F1 Ferrari? In that respect, it is truly difficult to compare Rally Trophy to Grand Prix Legends, NASCAR 4, or F1 20001. In a general automotive sense, Rally Trophy does just seem to do a very good job of simulating �60s and �70s rally cars, though, and as a vehicle simulator - especially from a physics standpoint - I think that Rally Trophy definitely falls towards the sophisticated and advanced end of the sim spectrum. As someone who appreciates the physics of a driving/racing sim, Rally Trophy impresses me in the same ways that GPL, NASCAR 4, and F1 2001 impress me, even though it is hard to draw direct comparisons between these various types of sims.

One of the major things that makes comparisons difficult is the fact that Rally Trophy simulates not just different vehicles but also different track surfaces, including dirt, gravel, grass, and pavement - these are all valid rallying surfaces, and they�re all modeled in Rally Trophy.

Based on my own real-world experiences, I would have to say that the behavior of the gravel and pavement sections in Rally Trophy are dead-on. Years ago, I had a 1972 Opel Manta that I used to terrorize the asphalt-and-gravel back roads around where I grew up. There are a LOT of these kinds of roads in central Indiana, amid all the cornfields and such, and I was lucky enough to grow up where there are actually some twists, turns, and hills to go with the secluded driving experience. Ultimately, it was my 1972 Opel Manta that Rally Trophy reminded me of more than any other simulation, and I quickly realized that I had been a latent rally fan for much longer than I had originally thought. Better latent than never, I guess.

At any rate, the comparisons to my old Opel Manta (and also my 1974 rear-wheel-drive Dodge Colt) kept coming to mind over and over again as I played with the Rally Trophy demos, and the smile on my face kept spreading the more I drove. I had to force myself to keep thinking of comparisons to other simulations because the game was SO immersive that all I could think of was other REAL driving experiences, not simulated ones.

This forced me to think long and hard about my own experiences with driving/racing sims.

Having tried the demos for M1RC, Rally Masters, and CMR2, I have found that I am only mildly impressed by the physics in any of those sims. I have been involved with GPL long enough to have developed a positively pathetic GPLRank, and, to my credit, I have managed to achieve a reasonably respectable F1CS2K Rank, so I tried to draw comparisons to those two games, as I feel that in addition to NASCAR Heat, NASCAR 4, and F1 2001, these sims represent the best modern physics engines available.

Using these physics engines as a yardstick, I still felt that Rally Trophy stacked up pretty well, but again, how do you draw comparisons between 1960 - 1970 vintage European econocars (okay, rally cars) and vintage 1967 Grand Prix machines, or modern-day F1 hardware, or even modern Winston Cup stock cars? You can compare basic vehicle dynamics to some degree, you can compare to some extent tire models, but overall I think the comparison that sprang to mind first is still the most valid: my old 1972 Opel Manta.

Which is not to say that Rally Trophy can't compare to GPL, F1CS2K, F1 2001, NASCAR Heat, or N4 -- you can draw comparisons, but in many ways, I think that RT may be superior to all of these, at least in terms of how well it excels at modeling its particular automotive genre. Having never driven a GP, F1, or Winston Cup car, I can't say for sure how well these other sims model their respective genres, but I HAVE driven hardware similar to what's in Rally Trophy, and I can tell you that Rally Trophy has positively captured the essence of what it was like to blast along the backroads a 1970-vintage Opel Manta. The vehicles responses are right, the motion in the cockpit is right, the environmental factors like shadows and light are RIGHT. It's amazing, frankly -- amazingly realistic and well-done overall.

One of the most successful parts of Rally Trophy is the in-car views and the 3D cockpits. The cockpit views may be the most effective I've seen yet for closed-cockpit sims, with a very good balance between in-car details and outward view of the road. The cockpit itself is nicely-rendered, and the camera motions are VERY lively and realistic. The only way they could be better is if someone stood behind me and smacked me on the head with a cookie sheet occasionally to simulate my head hitting the roof as I sail over the bumps and ruts!

From a graphics standpoint, Rally Trophy is STUNNING -- even my wife was impressed with the visuals. In many ways the visuals remind me of Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed, without any of the visual problems that are present in that title (such as green smoke, for example). The graphics in Mobil 1 Rally Championship also come to mind, and I would say that Rally Trophy�s visuals also rank right up there with Superbike 2001 and F1 Racing Championship. In a way, they're not as photo-realistic as either of those titles, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because Rally Trophy has more of an "organic" feel to it that I personally find VERY immersive. Not only is it a graphical tour-de-force, but it also runs well with high levels of detail enabled on my midrange Duron 750 system with 256MB of RAM and an aging 32MB GeForce256 card.

There are only three courses and three cars included in the preview version, and all of the cars in the preview demo are rear-wheel drive. The offical demo that is available to the general public only features one car (a front-drive Mini) and one course, which really doesn�t do the game justice. With only a front-drive car available for the general public to sample, there�s no way to tell how well Rally Trophy models front-drive physics versus rear-drive physics, for example. Based on what I have seen, though, I can assure you that the handling differences between the various vehicles -- and also the front- and rear-wheel drive vehicles -- are definitely noticeable, as are the differences in track surfaces, which include asphalt, gravel, dirt, and snow.

The sounds in the demo and preview versions aren't fully-implemented yet, and there are some significant sounds missing, such as gravel "pinging" off the wheel wells and undercarriage. As I understand it, these sounds are also missing in the European retail release, and I have not head if the upcoming patch will address the sounds, so this is somewhat disappointing (but not a show-stopper). The "gravel against the wheel wells and undercarriage" sounds would definitely be nice to see in a future patch (or perhaps in Rally Trophy 2), and something like this would go a long way towards taking Rally Trophy to a new level from an audio standpoint. Please take note, Bugbear.

As far as the tracks go, they are simply impressive. Hardcore rally fans have complained because the stages are somewhat short by rallying standards, and because the tracks are fairly wide, but I find the length to be more or less satisfying, and the width to be more realistic than the narrow "ditches" in some rallying titles (like M1RC, for example). The track surfaces are well done, with varying traction levels being very well modeled.

The snowy track segments are properly slick, but there is a "drive everywhere" aspect that allows you to pretty much go anywhere, as if the snow cover off the road is only about 2" deep. When you hang a tire off the road surface into the snow it does slow you down a little, but perhaps not enough -- I have driven on unpacked snow in real life, but never at the speeds that can be achieved in Rally Trophy, so I can't be sure how realistic the snow resistance is. Overall, this isn't a show-stopper at all, but I felt that the "drive-anywhere" aspect should have been muted a bit on the snow-covered segments in particular. Then again, I probably shouldn't have been going cross-country over those snow-covered fields, but I felt it was important to explore the "envelope" a bit. Note that it is possible to get your vehicle hung up while driving off-road -- both in the snow and in clear, dry conditions -- and it is pretty much impossible to travel at true race speeds while making these off-road exploratory excursions, so this aspect doesn�t really detract from the overall level of realism.

What does all this add up to? For me, this adds up to a must-have title, and I will be waiting in line at Electronics Boutique on the day that Rally Trophy is released in the states. The retail version of Rally Trophy promises 42 different tracks set in 5 different countries, with varying weather conditions such as daylight, sunset, snowfall, rain, storm and foggy weather. Add in 11 famous classic car models with a highly detailed damage model and what seems to be the most realistic physics in any rally sim yet, and Rally Trophy looks like it has everything it needs to be a real hit once it arrives on the U.S. (and Canadian) shores.

Even if you�re not a rally fan, you owe it to yourself to pick up Rally Trophy when it arrives here - it just might surprise you to learn that you really are a rally fan, after all.


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

• PC 300MHz
  
• 64MB RAM
  
• Win 95, 98, ME, 2000
  
• 8MB Graphics Card
  
• 8-speed CD-ROM
  
• DirectX-Sound Card
  
• Mouse
  
• Keyboard
  
• Multiplayer (LAN, Internet) 1-6 Players
  

• Duron 750MHz
  
• MSI Pro2 motherboard with built-in sound
  
• 256MB RAM
  
• Windows 98
  
• 32MB GeForce256 video card