Parking Garage Rally Circuit Review: The Best Sega Saturn Game That Never Was... Yet

Drifting in a game is simple: either you can or can't do it. Art of Rally makes it an art, and Inertial Drift is an extension of your thumbs. With JDM: Rise of Scorpion, it's a tad tricky down the streets of Japan, but with Parking Garage Rally Circuit, flooring it in even tighter spaces is as easy as finishing this sente

Someone might chuckle at that. Yes, God's honest truth, drifting in Walaber's latest and greatest is mind-blowing. The early tutorial says to hold X to drift. Is it going to be that easy? Add some pressure to the stick to hold the line; it could work. Spoiler: it does.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit is the best Sega Saturn rally game that never was. Well, it could be. Fellow scanline simps will gawp at what's on offer here. It would be heaven if Walaber could provide a sit-in arcade unit for every purchase. It looks the part; the soundtrack by The Holophonics sounds the part, but does the game play its part? Yes. Ah, repeating the last paragraph, but you're getting it - this is fab.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit Review

Playing entirely on the Valve (which plays great on the Steam Deck™), the first port of call was to get around a multi-storey car park within the defined time that awards a gold, silver or bronze. Unsurprisingly, my first attempt didn't present any bling to brag about, though I could try the next level. Sure, let's do that.

As a first-person perspective driver, I felt underrepresented and couldn't quite work the sometimes claustrophobic spaces of a single track paired with concrete half walls on each side. Clipping said wall, or any stationary object for that manner, is a pig - Phillis, the physics pig - who inflicts bouts of floaty, rolling sensations that spoil the flow.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit uses a respawn button, but from experience, you're already out of the running if you're pressing it. After a dozen or so runs, I was starting to get it, so I returned to the first stage to obtain my gold. Boom! First attempt. The controls become natural, comparable to the earlier example of 'an extension of your thumbs'. My leaderboard score is in, and it's... it's not great.

Lead By Example

Not being an advocate for online play, I do have a competitive gremlin that loves to see my name on the billboard, a.k.a. online leaderboards. Thinking I could improve on the last run, I now see an influx of ghost vehicles of other players and, in the case of receiving a review code before launch day, they're fellow reviewers.

I've never insinuated that I'm a good gamer, but getting one up on what can be the elite was an incentive. Seeing unrecognisable names, I floored it, pressed that drift button, and steadily climbed the ranks. My best ranking (until you much better players purchase the game and wipe away all historical records) was third place. An outstanding achievement, though looking at the leader's times, shot that down. Wait a minute... 'Walaber'? How convenient.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit will bring out your competitive side and, due to the authentic feel of the drift controls, will have you endlessly attempt to shave off milliseconds of your time. Though a completely different type of game, it's as addictive as Vampire Survivors, and for all the right reasons. Putting aside the leaderboard incentive, there are many stages to race in, and though it's fair to assume these multi-storeys are the same as the last, the 'environmental hazards' and level design make for a unique experience, as do the different types of car classes. Pending you can unlock them.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit Review Summary

The biggest challenge of Parking Garage Rally Circuit isn't the learning curve, figuring out race lines or unlocking OP vehicles; it's challenging yourself. Can you take significant risks to place higher on the leaderboard? I say fast-track it; buy the game as soon as possible, screenshot your scores, and by the time the game kicks off, which it should, you can reminisce like me about how amazing you were at hooning around random car parks without having the prefix DK or calling everyone gaijin.