Hello all! I've recently come back to playing this game, and trying out speed-running the IL's. I used to play it as a kid at my local arcade. We had a Sega Rally 2 cabinet and I used to play it quite a bit.

I just thought I'd propose some ideas and share some information that I've recently come across.

First off; I've been mostly playing the DC version of the game, something I actually hadn't ever actually played until recently. In doing so, I've come to realize that the DC and arcade version are very very different games in quite a few ways, I won't go into extensive detail, but by doing some research into the development of the three versions of SR2 you'll quickly find they have many core differences. They aren't really even running off of the same "engine" to my knowledge, as the Sega Model 3 has a fair bit more horsepower, and thus a "nerfed" version was made for the DC, on the Windows CE framework. They released the PC version last, and it is in fact in almost every way identical to the Dreamcast version minus the Dreamcast hardware-specific features (VMU saving, ghosts etc.).

That being said, I think it's extremely reasonable to claim that the Arcade version needs to be distinctly ranked separately from the DC and PC versions, as it really is a different game altogether. Please do correct me if I'm wrong here, but as far as I can tell both the RTA and IGT times would not line up from arcade to DC/PC. Not to mention the lack/difference of cars, settings and framerates between the two respectively. I.e. It would be similar to comparing Doom 64, and the new Doom 64 remake for switch/PC/etc. Yes its the same "game", but not enough to share ranking for speedrunning. Not to mention the arcade version doesn't even have the 10-year mode.

**I'm in NO way saying the Arcade version should have its own speedrun.com page (though it could). I think the player-base at the moment is obviously so small that keeping one page and just having the separate designation is more ideal.

So the second thing I'd like to mention is this user on YouTube I stumbled across this week while checking out the PC version (PC may be the superior version for IGT time and IL's but I'm not sure yet).

You can find him here: https://www.youtube.com/user/IWantBritneySpears

I will be making an attempt to contact him soon. Definitely recommend checking out his runs. He's got a large group of IL videos as well as some longer SR2 stuff, I actually haven't watched each and every one. This guy, as far as I can tell apart from timed RTA runs, may be the best player I've seen at this game so far. Anyone running IL's right now can chime in! I'm definitely curious.. but as far as I can tell this persons good. Their times are hard to beat. Not only that but they seems to have figured out some optimizations; noticeably the fastest cars for each IL, but I'm also curious to see their settings. I had to mess around for some time to get anything that handled as well and was as fast as their Lancia (the fastest car), I'm just assuming again, but it seems to me like they know what they're doing.

Would be cool to see the times added to this site, even just as non-user "white" legacy times. You'll notice his stuff is old (2011-2012). Would also be really cool to make some contact with the person and see if he has anything to share.

If anyone has any questions/discussion please reply! Thanks for reading, hopefully I can post a couple half decent IL times soon.

About the Leaderboards differences, I did find a japanese site that seems to contain replay files for records from a supposed Japanese community, and tbh I'm not so sure anymore about the two versions differences. Here's the site: http://ir3d.netgamers.jp/segarally2/PC_02-text.html

Browsing it well it seems to have detailed leaderboards with times set from different players around japan, and some seem to even have screenshots of the runs. The site also used to have videos of their runs but it seems all videos are offline. It would be cool to check if any of those times are actually legit, but I'm about sure they are.

Seems like their times are way faster than any other time set by anybody on Youtube, at least on the Dreamcast version, confirming that there actually aren't any differences between the two versions. (Unless all those times are cheated, but I don't have any reason to believe they are)

Wow. That's nothing short of amazing Brionac. What a great find, thanks so much for sharing. I just spent an hour going through the site, I'm not sure I've seen every little corner of the site but I'm going to make an effort to. This is absolutely amazing to see an old times page for a game still preserved like this. Seems as though the owner posted updated content on here as recently as 2019, so that's pretty interesting.

The legitimacy is obviously there, this dates back to pre-2000 and contains some absolutely wild stuff on all three versions of the game, but there's a ton of good PC/DC ghosts and times. I definitely think this is the highest tier of times I've seen so far, which is normally to be expected from Japan. These are nothing short of "benchmark" times.

There really is a large database of useful information here, from times to ghosts to strat's and recommended setups for every level. The guy's even got a full "diary" of his computers that he built.. almost a decade worth of upgrades and recommended PC setups for people to use to play the game back in the day. Interestingly enough it's worth noting that he seems to be advocating for the player base to switch from DC to PC if possible, in a manner of speaking anyways. It would make sense as the PC version runs a higher framerate and has more features, and of course came out later.

There's so much info on that site, I'm curious to see if there would be a decent way to transfer it to speedrun.com or at least back it all up somehow. It would be such a shame to see that site disappear, and by the looks of it it's held up by one or a small group of people, though its nice to see some newer dates scattered in places. Some "speed-communities" DREAM of old stuff like that for their games, as having past player goals to aim for/records logged, and a history/knowledge of the game is something that can easily be lost in time. I think it's cool to preserve it if possible.

Here are a few quick take away's/confirmations I made from having a look:

• 4MT seem's to be the fastest transmission setting, you'll notice almost all the top records use it unless the car only has 5MT. There seems to be an order of priority : MT > AT and the less gears the better. MT definitely seems to be faster but I'm not 100% about 4 > 5 and so on, though I have found in other info sources that 4MT is faster than 5 or 6MT

• The DC and PC versions seem to be identical, at least in "IGT". You'll see that they don't list the times together anywhere on this site. Though they're ranked separately they're all very similar frames of time and the times on each respective platform are competitive to each other it would seem, but I haven't looked into this deeply just the few levels I'm currently playing.

• The main difference between versions is the available cars

One other thing of interest I've recently found is if you search up "セガラリー2" (sega rally 2) on YouTube you can find a ton of Japanese record videos, some very very hard to find they don't come up in youtube's algorithm or do so very rarely, so you either need a direct link or a ton of searching. I've found videos like this that have top 3 times even compared to times listed on this japan leaderboards site. There are especially a ton of arcade videos with that search term. If you try adding an english level name after you can get more specific sometimes, i.e search "セガラリー2 muddy". You can also try the level names in Japanese.

I'm honestly pretty clueless on how they could get times so fast with cars like the Peugeot 306 Maxi which is a piece of wood in terms of handling, it's honestly beyond reach for me. I would actually like to have a look at the replay files myself but I don't know how to import them into the Dreamcast version.

It's beyond me as well. The levels I'm running right now, I can't figure it out either.. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the settings I'm using, I've noticed that there's little niche things in the settings that change the handling a ton with specific cars. Still though I agree it's a bit out of reach for me right now as well. All the levels I'm playing they have 3-4 seconds ahead of me and I'm struggling to just break 500 ms ahead of my current records which are still 4 second slower. But I'm on the PC version now and I have it running great, it's unfortunately a big improvement to the DC version (I wanted to play this on DC haha). But the PC version is hands down better in every way. I can use my PS4 or Xbox one controller and it runs at 60fps to start.

I think it's possible though. The times don't seem unrealistic, it just seems like they knew things we don't.

I've already been able to back up my own replay files on the PC version freely so I expect I should be able to load these up with no issue, I will definitely be testing that tonight and tomorrow (very exciting lol).

As for Dreamcast ghosts, I have little to no idea how it would work with console. I have a vast knowledge of consoles like the N64, but my Dreamcast knowledge is lacking as best haha. I do have ghosts working and I'm able to back them up and load them on the DC emulator "demul" though, as this is how I was most recently playing the game before PC. I can explain that process to you if you'd like, it's not very complicated. That being said the problem is actually GETTING them from this site. From what I saw, they had some type of system set up where you could directly email the ghost file from this site. I'm actually assuming they're referring here to emailing them directly to the player's console itself.. which is so damn cool. As I recall from the "PSO1 days" the dream cast definitely had web browsing software and capabilities.. I think it may have had a type of email client as well? Anyways if that is the case I have no idea if that system is still set up, it may have been an email server that was setup to send to down/upload the files directly. You could try seeing if the email server still works and just send it to a normal email and see what happens, I haven't got that far yet, as to trying any of that. If by chance you can retrieve any type of files though I can help you to play them on emulator. As for console, I'm sure there are ways, but I'm not entirely sure.

I guess I might also get the PC version of the game, though I tried to install it on my pc and there's no BGM. I know there's a fix to this, but it only works if you rip the OST from the original disk of the game, so I might actually end up getting a copy of Sega Rally 2 at some point. And yeah, if there is a way to download the replays from their site to check them directly on PC version, then it's still a big step forward to understanding how they manage to go this fast.

I'll do you one better. As I may of mentioned, over the past month especially I have found a huge amount of resources and info for this game, and I think this may be one of the biggest. This is a "portable" version of the game (its not really "portable" by todays definition, as it still makes a local temp folder). This is by far the best and most complete/stable version of the PC copy I've been able to find, I have a rip of the original disk and I've tried the other mods (again some of those mods are included in this).

This guy made a fully enclosed PC version, it has a custom launcher, custom options, some old tools repurposed like a ghost save tool (you don't really need it) He's basically done a ton of legwork and wrote batch files and the like for all of mods and data for the game, and has patched the executable. I haven't even discovered all of the features yet that he actually included in here. Some of the readme's are a bit tough, though most things are well documented/easy enough to figure out with some common sense.

I can't explain how underrated and how high the lack of recognition is for this person and what they have created here. Truly this person has done god's work in terms of preserving this game on PC and doing the community a massive favour. I'm no guru coder by any means, but it seems like a lot of T.L.C. and effort went into producing this. The person does have an active twitter, and I very may well reach out to make a small donation or at least say thank you. I'll have to properly credit them if I add this to the resources section.

download this: https://ia803101.us.archive.org/zip_dir.php?path=/30/items/segarally2_portable.zip

Installation: Take the .zip file and extract it once into it's own folder. This main zip contains another zip inside, but I've never actually touched it yet, (it may be a modified game executable/diff version). All you have to do is double click the .exe that comes out of the main zip file and away you go.

I HIGHLY recommend muting your volume before opening the .exe as it plays a song in the launcher that is just a loud buzzing/screeching noise on my machine. VERY LOUD will destroy headphones lol!! There is a box in the bottom right hand corner to mute the music if you want to browse the launcher (and you should). I suspect this issue may be due to a lack of mismatched sample rates in the music the launcher is trying to play?

Launcher: There are a ton of crazy things in here, from some cool artwork and VB programming and displays, to game history and even some included PC cheat codes and a save file that has everything unlocked, and the alternate models for cars (I haven't full figured out how to utilize this yet). I could do a huge write-up on the launcher alone, but nevertheless if you hit launch it will take you to the games original launch menu where you can config a few options, I think the original ghost saving/loading tool is in there, some other things and then you can launch the game from the first option. After you run it, it seems to use a series of batch files to implement the patches/mods for music/framerate 60fps lock for game speed and some others I that I can't tell what they do yet. **DON'T touch anything as it starts and launches the batch files in DOS cmd windows, you'll see confirmations boxes pop up but don't click them, just wait and let it do its thing, and it will launch the game. **Also some anti-virus software may detect a false-positive when you go to unpack the .zip or run the .exe This is normal, I can verify there is no malicious software included (that I can find, use at your own risk of course) and the FP is just due to the nature of the mods being a type of memory inject.

Bugs/problems: nothing yet except one annoying, but not game-breaking bug. The screen where you save a ghost after a new record in time attack will crash the game when you try to exit. It seems this is because he programmed the pathways for loading menus and the game itself. Probably to replace the way the game used to call the next screen from menu to menu, but for whatever reason this exit is broken or missing, so it crashes to desktop. That being said it isn't game breaking; the ghosts still save and your progress prior does as well to my knowledge, just annoying as you have to restart the game every time you want to save a ghost. I'm trying to find a workaround, but for now that's my biggest issue.

Give that a try Brionac, I think you'll like it. Though it would be cool to see someone put some times up for the DC version. I'll still probably go back and dabble in the DC one, I'm trying to get original hardware set up with a copy of SR2 for DC and a decent RGB output setup. I definitely think the PC version is "superior" but who knows... maybe some of the cars exclusive to the NTSC and PAL DC versions are some of the fastest for certain levels, I need to comb over and compare more records from the J-records site to be more sure.

Enjoy! Hit me up if you have any questions or need help

This just keeps getting better and better... check this out...

http://ir3d.netgamers.jp/segarally2/Ranking/PC-r25_Rivi.htm

http://ir3d.netgamers.jp/segarally2/Ranking/DC-r25_Rivi.htm

These are tiny little html hyperlinks at the bottom of the PC download times page that I completely skipped over when I was first looking through this site.. but when you click them... This is the level "Riviera" for Time attack in both of the DC and PC versions.. take a look. They claim to be the "SEGA RALLY2 OFFICIAL RANKING LAST RESULT".

...are you kidding me?

The PC version has 525 entries taken 2005.10/09 ... the DC version has... TWO THOUSAND AND THIRTY SEVEN ENTRIES??? on 2004.07/05??

I've personally never seen anything like this in my life. Was this an extremely popular speedgame in Japan in the late 90s/early 2000s?? I mean yeah those are just arbitrary entries with a name/car/time, but come on.. 2337 entries for ONE IL??

This absolutely has to be a copy/backup of what I suspect "segarally.com" or maybe .jp was, I'll have to do some more research. Clearly at some point Sega must have hosted a leaderboard with some type of verification system. The numbers here rival the likes of massive game-specific leaderboard sites such as the-elite.net and heck even the SM64 sites and this site! Again you would have to assume here that there would be duplicate runs from the same user here, and maybe the verification was extremely lax hence the amount of entries. But even then... the sheer numbers alone are amazing, and the fact that it's all Japanese.. I don't doubt there is some decent amount of legitimacy here... I mean come on look at the times! 80%+ of every board I've looked at so far, are not times to sneeze at.

Something else to note, is that you see a lot of re-occuring "clan tags" in these entries, stuff like @ATComp and the "P205 BOMBERS".. just so cool to think this game really may have had big groups of people competing for times. Sega must have had some type of promotional event, or possibly integration into the DC /PC games themselves that let you submit records directly. Again that wouldnt surprise me, as PSO (Phantasy Star Online) had similar features iirc. It really makes me wonder if there's a more active version of this leaderboard somewhere in Japan internet land that we don't know of, it's starting to seem not out of the realm of possibility if I'm being honest, either something saved, updated or added to. Or maybe this is it.

This is nothing short of amazing, and I'm definitely going to have to look further into this and back these times up. Here I was yesterday thinking if I could get a 1'38"xxx on Riviera TT I'd probably have this really strong and maybe "world" record... Hah.. turns out there's 85+ people ahead of me.. no big deal..

I actually might get myself a copy of Sega Rally 2 for PC just to check how to import replays into the game from that site and check how they drive, because I'm interested in learning how to play properly. I'm wondering if there is some sorf of general guideline somewhere but I didn't find anything except for this site. So I guess the best option is to check the replays and see how they perform those times.

So, browsing nicovideo I did find a few videos of runs by japanese players. I'm gonna share them here: Desert in 2'42"128 Snowy in 2'45"934 Mountain in 2'56"736 Riviera 5 Laps in 2'38"818 Arcade PC Run in 3'59"813

Now that's something to work on. I think there should be some hints in these runs to understand how to go fast properly, but I'm guessing that using the third person view is already a good start since you can see better when the car is gonna hit the borders of the map, so that you can take corners faster.

There are also a few videos of runs for 10 Years Championship tracks, just search "セガラリー2", "セガラリー2 dc" or "セガラリー2 pc" on nicovideo in order to find them.

I still want to check the top runs though, those are probably gonna give the best hints at how to go the fastest possible.

@Brionac Just a little confused as to why you'd want to buy an original copy of the PC game? Other than nostalgic value and knowing that you physically own the copy (which don't get me wrong; is pretty cool).

The original CD may have usable "tools" on it but again: they're all functional, if not even more so in the repack that I linked above. I would strongly suggest trying the repackage of the game I linked, it contains the replay import tool you speak of, and while it's not fully functional I have managed to get it working 100% it just functions a bit odd because of its default paths.

And so.. I'll give you a quick update on the ghosts from the Japanese site... they all work. Last night I raced in a two decade old game against two decade old Japanese ghosts. I can not even begin to describe the amount of nerd chills haha. The replay loading tool is picky, but it works and I was able to watch 9 replays on the Riviera 3-lap TT stage. What a treat, I couldn't believe how fast these guys are. You can tell there was a massive effort here to get some of these times, some of these guys probably grinded upwards of 500+ hours into the DC and PC versions.

I'm concentrating on Riviera for now. I've got about 40 hours in it so far, and I have a 1'38"8xx but the record is 4 seconds ahead at 1'34"429.. and it's stupid fast. The two people that submitted for this TT ghost section are "RYT" (he's the site OWNER and I would say the 2nd-4th "best" player in the world) and the legendary Kenji Okamoto or "K. Okamoto". Kenji's times are insane. Absolute master-class for this game, he has some of the only 1'34"xxx times on this track and he did it in 5 different cars under 1'35"xxx again keeping in mind I'm approaching the 50 hour mark and I'm 4 full seconds back. These guys spent multiple years perfecting these runs, the game seemed to be very popular in Japan during the PSO1 era.

As for learning how to get that fast.. it's crazy interesting. First thing of note is that the 9 ghosts I downloaded for this level, are actually not the 9 fastest times on the leaderboards I found, for whatever reason. The fastest ghost though, is the world record right now between the DC/PC category, it's the fastest run on those leaderboards between both categories. I went around the first corner about 100 times with the Kenji's ghost to try and figure it out, but it's tough. He takes an outside line on both hairpins on this track, whereas I was actually finding it fastest to "bonk" around the apex and cut it as quick as possible. It seems he's using a combination of the brake and e-brake (handbrake) to take the widest possible line around the corners that force you to slow down, in this level its the two hairpins. In this game when you use the handbrake, they included the animation for the rear wheels locking, like a real car would do when applying the handbrake in real life (very cool design by Sega). Thanks to that, I can tell he's applying handbrake, you can see it in detail in the replay. At first glance that's all I could see... but then I started noticing other things like how he's actually swinging the car AWAY from the corner before he enters his "wide-line". He's quite literally doing an extremely fast "Scandinavian flick" I think with the e-brake as he enters. Whatever his method and settings for it are, it makes him keep a CRAZY amount of speed through the first corner, so even with my best first corner... I've yet to keep up with Kenji after the second hairpin. How crazy is that. His second corner is even faster than the first and I just cant keep up.

That's just the start to the madness... here are some things that just don't make any sense to me yet.

1. He doesn't seem to "boost" when he launches. As you may know, if you time the throttle input to when the announcer says: "GO!" you get a significant "boost" when you launch the car. You cant tell me this guy got this fast but overlooked that quick-start feature, it just doesn't add up. I can easily smoke him to the first corner, but again after that first one he takes off on me. It's almost like he used a +1 gearing or something, where as I was using the -5 gearing for maximum acceleration, as it's way faster (or at least seemed to be, but apparently isn't lol)

2. After doing 50+ first corners alongside his ghost, I started to notice he smacks/hits the wall a lot going around the corner, at first glance they looked like mere error, or just the result of taking a super wide line to keep speed. But then I started to notice that it's indeed.. purposeful. He's strategically bouncing off the outside of the track at optimal locations to create tiny "boosts". These little pushes aren't to propel him forwards, but actually to attempt to line the car up to continue out of the corner exit with maximum speed. It seems that any type of braking slows your speed so I think what he's doing is rapidly applying brakes with little taps of both brakes, one to slow the car to line up the turn and the handbrake to get the car to pivot on it's axis or "drift". It's so difficult to explain, but so mind-blowingly fast to drive alongside. Again.. what a treat..

3. This I think was the craziest one for me and kind of shows that the above may make 0 sense lol... the fact that both Kenji and RYT get sub 1'35"xxx times on this level with not only 3 different cars, but 3 very different HANDLING cars.. I'm not even sure handling is the word, its like the grip physics are kind of completely different between cars. So watching Kenji do this run in the 306 MAXI... yeah I can see it.. the car handles well enough with modified stats that it seems doable. The 037 RALLY? yeah I could also see it, I was using it already and it seemed like the fastest car and had the "grippiest" handling for this level so it made sense, also that first guy I linked on YouTube was using it (though his 1'39"xxx has actually proved to be a very weak time compared to Japan). But come on now... low and behold.. the guy does it in the 205 Turbo16 and gets a 1'35"564... That's a COMPLETELY different beast. That car handles wildly different, you're basically playing a drifting game, or it looks that way watching them use it. I never would have thought that car could be that fast.. never mind get a time like that. And again he goes on and does it in the also completely different STRATOS?

This was all, well... nothing short of amazing to watch I'll tell you that. That was just one level.. I can't wait to go through the rest. I think this goes to show that we have (or at least I do) a very literal "tip-of-the-iceberg" thing going on here. The meta to this game is deep. The large amount of un-seeable settings in replays that can be utilized and optimized combined with the amount of technique and skill you can apply with each is absolutely massive.

I remember the gamefaqs page had guides on some vehicles, there's two 306 guides for arcade that might explain some stuff: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/dreamcast/198573-sega-rally-championship-2/faqs