Sega Rally Championship 2 finally playable online again thanks to Dreamcast Live

The new servers for online Dreamcast games keep coming this year and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming.

Sega Rally Champion 2 finally has its online multiplayer functions restored thanks to Dreamcast Live. Players can once again take their off-road racing chops online thanks to Shuouma getting it all up and running for the first time in a long while, hot after restoring online modes to games like Bomberman Online, Hundred Swords, and even Propeller Arena.

You’re probably thinking “Wait a second, Big Elk. Sega Rally 2 didn’t have online features.” You’re right, but much like Virtua Tennis (Another game Shuouma got back online), only the Japanese version of Sega Rally 2 had online multiplayer. It was stripped out of the international releases. Because of that, Dreamcast Live can only support the Japanese version of Sega Rally 2, which doesn’t have much of a language barrier anyway, thankfully. In fact, it even had a few exclusive cars that were also removed from the North American version for unknown reasons.

Now strap yourselves in and go past the break to hear more about this exciting development.

Sega Rally Championship 2 (Or just Sega Rally 2) probably needs no introduction for most Sega fans, but I’ll provide one anyway. Originally made as a Model 3 arcade game by Sega AM4 and released in 1998, the Dreamcast port launched first in Japan in early 1999, early enough to actually be the first Dreamcast game with online multiplayer. It released in North America and Europe in the later half of that same year, but with local split-screen multiplayer only. My guess is that because the US is such a huge country compared to Japan, and Europe a huge union of countries, and because Sega Rally 2 and Virtua Tennis released so early in the Dreamcast’s life, Sega might’ve needed more time to get a reliable internet gaming infrastructure going so that players on one side of the US or Europe could have a reliable connection with players on the other side. That’s before you factor in Canada, Mexico, and states and territories separate from the mainland USA like Alaska or Puerto Rico, as well as connecting with countries across oceans or the Equator. Factor in that Sega Rally 2’s Japanese launch was months ahead of the Dreamcast’s US launch and, well, you get the idea. Perhaps if the Dreamcast got to stick it out longer, Sega might’ve released new versions with online multiplayer in the west later, like they did with Sega Rally on Saturn?

Many of you may know that Sega Rally 2 was also available on PC. This version had online multiplayer functionality in all countries it was released in, but that ran off a different network than the Dreamcast version and isn’t, and never was, cross compatible. Otherwise, it is the same as the Dreamcast port.

If you’re familiar with rally racing, it sees you racing across a lot of scenic outdoor racetracks across different terrain, mostly off-road terrain, with a wide variety of consumer cars fine-tuned for racing. In real life, rally races are usually a race against the clock, with multiple racers going through a linear track one at a time, with the fastest time winning. Sega Rally does feature other AI racers showing up in certain spots of the track, but racing multiplayer has other players starting alongside you at the starting line and the racetracks all loop back around the start, like most other racing games. Racers also have a co-driver to warn them about turns and obstacles coming up ahead so the driver can act accordingly while maintaining speed and control as best as they can, just like real rally racing.

Besides multiplayer and arcade mode, Sega Rally 2’s home ports had a “10-Year Championship” single player campaign with unique racetracks not featured in the arcade mode or the arcade cabinet. Playing this mode let you unlock extra cars to drive in all modes, so you may wanna spend some time in that mode before going online, especially since that mode’s racetracks are available to race on online. Familiarizing yourself with them should help you look like a more competent driver to online players.

Online races work about the way you’d expect and feature lobbies with icon-based navigation as well as a chat box to talk to players with text in between races. It is similar to Daytona USA 2001, in that regard, and you are able to type in English. The Dreamcast keyboard is also supported, or at least the Japanese one is. I cannot confirm if the American or European English keyboard would work, but you can let us know in the comments if you can test that.

To take Sega Rally 2 online, you will need a DreamPi to connect to your Dreamcast modem, as the game launched before the Broadband Adaptor was even developed and, thus, didn’t support it. Your DreamPi will have to be updated to at least version 2.1, currently the latest version as of this writing, and you must create a unique Login ID in your web browser settings, which will also act as your user name in-game, as the default “dream” ID will not work. After that, you’re set for online action. You can check Dreamcast Live’s Connection Guide for more detailed information and their supported game list for other games that have online features accessible through them. Any original Japanese copy of Sega Rally 2 will work with this.

So are you a fan of Sega Rally 2? Have you played either the Japanese Dreamcast port or the PC port online before? Are you about to try it for yourself on Dreamcast Live? Are there any more online Dreamcast games not already available to play with Dreamcast Live that you want added? Do you feel the heartbeat of the land? Please tell us in the comments below.

BTW, I wasn’t able to write about it at the time, but Dreamcast Live also restored online multiplayer to Pro Yakyuu Team de Asobou Net! (2000) back in July, so including Sega Rally 2, that’s 7 Dreamcast games with restored online functionality in 2026. I can’t wait to see what #8 will be.