Old School Rally has been knocking around in early access since mid-2024, quietly amassing a following of classic rally tragics who get misty-eyed at the mention of Sega Rally or Colin McRae. Things were a little delayed after a brief pit stop in early 2025 (thanks to some, let’s say, legally ambitious car designs), but it has finally crossed the 1.0 finish line.
And let’s be honest, the timing couldn’t be better. Racing games have been a rough ride lately — too many big-budget promises, not enough follow-through. The genre has been so focused on chasing realism, it is like it has forgotten that games should also be fun. So when something like Old School Rally slides in, stripped-back and unashamedly retro, it feels like a breath of fresh air.
Old School Rally isn’t pretending to be the next Richard Burns Rally. It’s not even pretending to be modern. It’s pretending it’s 1998 — and good grief, it’s both convincing and a lot of fun.
A Love Letter to Late 90s Rallying
The development direction is crystal clear the second you boot Old School Rally up — you’re instantly transported back to the era of CRT monitors and dial-up internet. Blocky, low-poly graphics? Tick. Menus that look like they were designed in MS Paint? Tick. A soundtrack that slaps harder than it has any right to (literally — there’s slap bass aplenty)? Double tick.
Don’t expect any modern bells & whistles, either — you won’t find controller haptics, authentic engine notes or realistic damage here. Old School Rally doesn’t care about your immersion — it cares about your nostalgia. It feels less a new release and more a time machine to your childhood bedroom, TV glowing, snacks at hand, glued to a PS1-era rally game. And how can you fault it for that?
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However, there is one decidedly not-old-school addition I’m thrilled about — a proper photo mode. You can capture your best drifting with a range of filters, including a gloriously authentic CRT one.
Simple Content, Satisfying Loop
Old School Rally packs a decent amount of content, particularly considering its $14.50 AUD (on PC via Steam) price point. Stages span Japan, Greece, Australia, Sweden, and beyond — each location with multiple stages, plus weather and time-of-day variations. The low-poly scenery is charming and spot-on for the locale: cherry blossoms in Japan, stone walls in Greece, and the odd elephant lurking in Kenya’s background.
One small miss: the stage time benchmarks are laughably lenient. Beating them by 20 seconds isn’t a brag, it’s routine. Progression could do with a bit more challenge, but the driving experience itself outshines any progression grind, so this wasn’t a big deal.
The suite of cars available might not be technically licensed, but you’ll have no trouble spotting your favourites, including a not-Lancia Stratos, and a definitely-not Audi Quattro. There are 32 cars spalling different eras of rallying, all with custom livery options to boot. There’s even a tractor, because why not? Saves the copywright concerns.
There’s also a time-trial mode for chasing global leaderboards, plus a “versus” mode where you can tacke a stage against a CPU opponent or a friend. No difficulty setting means the CPU isn’t much of a rival, but at least it makes for some heroic photo mode content.
A Powerslide Party
Handling is pure arcade joy. Even the slightest movement of the thumbstick coaxes out a neat little drift, in a way that feels both predictable and highly forgiving. There isn’t a slide you can’t save, even when you’re completely sideways into a corner at 140 km/h.
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That being said, there’s not a huge amount of nuance or variance as you progress through stages and cars. Different surfaces — gravel, tarmac, snow — look distinct, but they don’t meaningfully transform how the cars behave. That is beyond tarmac sometimes feeling oddly the least grippy of the lot. Likewise, the car roster offers small differences in feel and stability, but don’t expect night-and-day shifts between the FWD, RWD, and AWD variants.
A lack of haptics aside, the feel on a controller is genuinely lovely. But if you want the full retro hit, dust off the keyboard. It works a treat and adds an extra layer to the nostalgia. There’s also wheel support if you’re chasing the full Sega Rally fantasy, but it almost feels too serious for what the game is going for.
A Pacenote Problem
The one area where I wish Old School Rally wasn’t so old school? Pace notes. For the benefit of the rally newcomer, corners are typically graded by severity, from 1 (most severe) to 6 (least severe). Here, things are much more simple — corners are either easy, medium, or hard. Fine, in theory, except Old School Rally’s co-drivers could do wih a refresh on the definition of “easy”. Too often, “easy” would precede a 90-degree turn, which at night or in fog, is not so fine.
On top, notes were mistimed more than often than not — I’ve had hairpins announced after I’d already introduced my car to a stone wall. That’s if the notes arrived at all — I was often left wondering if my co-driver had taken a smoko break.
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Still, it rarely ruins the fun — a healthy dose of full lock usually bails you out of any mess you find yourself in.
Should I play Old School Rally?
Old School Rally is fun, accessible, and absolutely dripping with nostalgia. It’s not perfect — and that’s precisely the point. The game does exactly what it promises on the tin, and it’s hard to fault a game for nailing its own brief. If you want realism, look elsewhere. If you want to power slide a tractor through cherry blossoms while slap bass blares in the background, Old School Rally is the game for you.
Quest Daily scores Old School Rally:
8/10
Old School Rally is out now and available on PC via Steam, Playstation 4/5, and Switch.
