In the Eighties, computer games required replay value to sell and coin-ops had to keep players' games short to be profitable, so it stands to reason that the earliest attempts at 3D rally games for PCs differed from their arcade equivalents. Take the 1988 PC title Lombard RAC Rally. It was hardly realistic, but it replicated actual courses and entire seasons. The 1989 coin-op Big Run, by comparison, was Out Run with rally cars.
By 1996, console games had a foot in both camps. They required longevity, but they were also expected to provide an arcade-like experience. This explains the thinking of a Codemasters team whose project took inspiration from both arcade and PC rally titles, as former Codemasters coder Chris Southall remembers. "A lot of us on the team were big Sega Rally fans," Chris notes. "We had a Saturn in the office with one of those early steering wheels, and we played a lot of Sega Rally at that point. There was another game on PC that we spent a lot of time playing called Network Q RAC Rally Championship. It was quite hardcore with long end-to-end special stages, and we referenced that as well. We really just looked at all of the games that were out there. At that point, the strategy at Codemasters was very much around finding a name and attaching a game to it, so that was an inspiration for Colin McRae Rally as well."
