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.”Before securing the popular rally driver for their game, foundations were laid for not just it but also a Formula 1 racing title, and this required a division of labour. Those that remained working on Codemasters’ rally title were then sent out to do research. “Before we started the game, a few of us in the design department were working on 3D vehicle physics,” Chris recalls. “That then became TOCA and Colin McRae Rally; we split the team up at that point. When we were just starting to work on Colin McRae Rally, Richard Darling sent us to a rally school, where we all drove cars around a forest stage. The point of that was that we wanted to do something that was an authentic rally experience for the hardware of the time, even though it was going to be an arcade-y game.”Rallying cry Retro Gamer: Subscribe! This feature originally appeared in Retro Gamer magazine. For more in-depth features and interviews on classic games delivered to your door or digital device, subscribe to Retro Gamer or buy an issue!The decision to strike this balance between simulation and coin-op-style gameplay was partially down to what was popular with the team’s target audience. A second consideration was the technical limitations of their target console. “By the nature of the PlayStation, and the kind of the games that were on there, it didn’t seem right to do a full sim,” Chris reasons. “It also wasn’t possible with integer point maths at that time. So we weren’t going to have 25-minute stages or anything like that, but we were trying to make the environments feel realistic and we spent a lot of time modelling how loose surface friction works versus traditional tarmac. We modelled the tracks so that their profiles mattered, and being able to go off the track was part of the experience as well.”Just as important as the game’s modelling was the look of its locations, which were based on those of the official World Rally Championship. As the internet and digital photography hadn’t yet come of age, this required globetrotting and skilled artists. “We sent people to different locations to take reference. That was important,” Chris emphasises. “One of my best friend’s brother happened to live in Kenya, and that was one of the locations in the game, so we sent him around Kenya, driving and taking references, which he then sent back to us. Sometimes we would send people working on the track designs as well as artists. When they stood on the roads they got a better insight on how to construct the tracks in the game. Then on the other side, a lot of clever people in the art team optimised things and did as much with the textures as possible to get as much variation as we could.”As well as getting reference for Colin McRae Rally’s environments, the team working on the project got the star of their game and his co-driver into the studio to do voice recordings. The team also got pointers on the implementation of their game’s cars. “Both Colin McRae and Nicky Grist were pretty involved,” Chris reviews. “I remember working on the Rally School mode, and I wrote a list of all the things that Colin needed to say. When he read them back you could tell he wasn’t a voice actor! He also gave us advice on how the cars handled, and it was just really cool to understand that stuff. Nicky would do the pace notes, which were for every corner or bit of the track that you came to.”Starting line While Colin McRae Rally came together, a rival firm beat Codemasters to market with a PlayStation rally game of its own. But rather than worrying the Colin McRae team, it convinced them that their decision to pour time into modelling was the right one. “When V Rally was released we were in mid-dev on Colin McRae Rally,” Chris recollects. “We didn’t think they got the sliding/hand brake right, so in general we were reassured of where we were at on the handling sports bettingmodel versus that. Colin McRae Rally was realistic enough rather than being a game that didn’t really obey the laws of physics.”Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter