Sega Rally's 1995 arcade original reaches Switch homebrew in 16:9, with ghosts and an online leaderboard

Port0r's Sega Rally for Switches running Atmosphère arrived on 8 October, with widescreen, mods and replays. A week of releases has also brought it to Linux and Steam Deck, Android, Mac and Meta Qu...

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Sega Rally Championship, the 1995 arcade game, is now a homebrew release for the Nintendo Switch. It comes from Port0r, a one-person project by jacquesdupontd on GitHub, and v0.5.1 went up on 8 October for Switch consoles running the Atmosphère custom firmware. A v0.5.3 update followed the same evening.

What the Switch version adds

The release notes lead with "the whole track in full 16:9, no black bars." The original 4:3 picture is still available, with the sides filled by mirrored scenery or left black. A menu the project calls the Workshop, opened by pressing plus and minus together, holds ten mods including free play, a mirrored track, night, comic book, black and white and CRT styles, along with a best-lap ghost, named replays, a photo mode, ten interface languages and settings for brightness, resolution and speed. The README also lists a 60fps option. Jean-seb's community HD texture pack is supported as an optional extra.

Steering works on either stick, with gas and brake on ZR and ZL or on the other stick, and manual gears on L and R. Version 0.5.3 added remapping for ten driving actions and in-game updates, which check the SHA-256 checksum and file header before installing. Anyone on 0.5.1 or 0.5.2 has to copy the new file over by hand once.

There is an online leaderboard, run through the Port0r Discord. The game shows a code, you send it from your phone to link your account, and it asks before publishing a time. The notes call this the first public version of that link and ask for bug reports.

Bring your own files

Port0r does not include any game data. You supply your own files made for MAME 0.289, srallyc.zip and segabill.zip, and the start screen names any file that is wrong or missing. The 0.5.3 notes mention "no changes to MAME emulation", which suggests the game runs through MAME code, though the app's own source is not public for now. Video capture is not included. The README recommends launching from the Homebrew Menu, by holding R while opening a game, because launching from the Album alone may run out of memory.

Everywhere at once

The Switch build is one strand of a busy week. The same repository carries Port0r: Rally VR for Meta Quest 3, which the README says rebuilds each 3D polygon the Sega Model 2 board draws, for each eye, at real scale. It has had releases since 7 October. Versions for Linux and the Steam Deck and for Android followed on 9 October, and a native Apple Silicon Mac version on 11 October, all using the same game files. The project describes itself as a free, non-commercial fan project not affiliated with Sega or any other rights holder.

Sources

Image: Port0r