Rally De Europe Is One of the Best Old-School Racers You've Never Heard Of

On April 27, 2000, a virtually unknown Japanese developer by the name of Prism Arts released a humble little racing game called Rally De Europe for the PlayStation. It would be the company’s third and final title. It never reached North America, nor did Prism Arts’ two games that preceded it — Rally De Africa and Circuit Beat. But much like Racing Lagoon, another Japan-only PlayStation racer, Rally De Europe is getting its due these days. And frankly, I’m gutted about what we missed out on 20 long years ago.

I never played Rally De Europe until 2020, when the pandemic compelled us all to run, screaming, to our respective happy places. Mine is and was playing old games, and so Rally De Africa and Europe — two titles I began to hear quite a bit about from the retro community — crossed my radar.

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Off the bat, I should stress that neither of these games offers any sort of earth-shattering, revolutionary gameplay concept in the way that Racing Lagoon did. These are straight up run-of-the-mill arcade racers, tasking the player with finishing first across a series of events, to unlock more cars and tracks. It’s basically Sega Rally, but without Sega Rally’s sublime physics.

Credit: xTimelessGaming via YouTube