“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill.
Not known for his love of rally sims, Winston Churchill could well have made the above statement about the genre’s most venerated title, Richard Burns Rally.
Released on the 3rd of September 2004 on PC, Richard Burns Rally was a direct competitor to the Colin McRae series of games, pitting two British rally world champions against each other in the real and virtual worlds.
However, Colin McRae’s games were generally accessible to all ages and abilities, while Richard Burns’ eponymous effort focused on the brutality of rallying, requiring a solid understanding of the sport to make the most of its handling model.
It was an interesting juxtaposition that mimicked their driving styles: Burns focused obsessively on details, famously devising the most complicated pacenotes system in the World Rally Championship alongside co-driver Robert Reid, while McRae was an all-action driver, full of natural exuberance and laconic one-liners (“if in doubt, flat out”).
Two decades later, however, RBR is perhaps more relevant than it was in 2004, with thousands of rally fans still enjoying the fruits of developer Warthog Games’s labour, while McRae’s games – although well-received – have faded into the mists of dirt-tinted nostalgia.
But why?
Recce
Warthog Games was a UK-based developer formed by former Electronic Arts personnel. In 2003 it purchased Atod Games, a small Swedish studio, renaming it Warthog Sweden. Atod had an eclectic back catalogue of games but forged its reputation by making the realistic rally title Mobil 1 Rally Championship, a unique counterpoint to arcadey rally titles like V-Rally, the official WRC series and McRae’s games.
So, when publisher SCi Games announced a multi-year, multi-game licensing deal with newly crowned WRC champion Richard Burns, there was only one studio up to the task: Warthog.
Made up of just 15 passionate developers, Warthog Sweden set to work in creating the most realistic rally video game ever.
Rally fever
“SCi Games probably didn’t know what they were ordering from us”, explained Game Director Dennis Gustaffson in a 2023 GameReactor interview.
“When we talked about a rally simulator, I think they probably thought that we might be a little bit more realistic than our previous rally games, but no more. When we started showing them a driveable game, I remember several people in the London office getting a bit of a shock at how challenging it really was,” he continued, highlighting the different approach RBR’s developers took to rally game development.
“For me, the commercial part was largely unimportant,” stated Physics Lead Eero Piitulainen in the same Game Reactor piece. “I remember that I didn’t really care about that, but rather just wanted to get as close to reality as possible,” emphasising the team’s strive for realism.
As a result, the game didn’t reach the heady sales heights of Colin McRae Rally and was even criticised by the media for being too difficult (gamesradar+ famously described it as “the hardest, most punishing game we’ve played”.
Real rally driver input
Naturally, Richard Burns had a lot of input on the game’s physics and car handling, but three-time Asia-Pacific Rally Championship winner Possum Bourne also provided valuable insights to the development team, especially concerning the real-world Australian stages featured in-game.
More hands-on still was rally consultant Simon Redhead, who collaborated with the game’s physics lead Piitulainen. Using his real-world rally experience, Redhead worked closely with the Swede on achieving the correct handling feel in Burns’ WRC-enforced absence.
The game’s physics have been embraced by current rally drivers too, with current FIA Junior ERC Championship podium contender Calle Carlberg using RBR to hone his skills:
“Even if Richard Burns Rally is soon 20 years old it’s still my go-to rally simulator”, the Swede told the official FIA ERC website earlier this year.
“The game continues to be updated through a Hungarian simulator community called Rallysimfans.hu and these guys are adding cars, stages and monthly updates to the game, making it for me by far the best rally simulator out there,” he continued, referencing the massively popular RBR-powered Rallysimfans mod (more on this later).
Gryazin
Other rally stars like the late Craig Breen, Teemu Suninen, Max McRae and Nikolay Gryazin have also been known to use RBR as a training tool, with many more amateur pilots exploring the benefits of running the Warthog-developed title.
“Games like DiRT [Rally] 2.0 or WRC… have really nice… graphics and also the stages are more representative but I want to feel the car, feel the right feedback, the right behaviour of the car. That’s why I only use Richard Burns Rally,” stated the WRC2 frontrunner in an ERC interview with Julian Porter.
The Russian driver used his RBR experience to great effect in the 2019 edition of the Barum Czech Rally Zlín, as he was able to practice the Semetin stage in-game before setting the fastest times in both real-world runs, beating the highly experienced Jan Kopecký in the process.
But RBR isn’t all about learning ideal driving lines and braking points.
“In the game, you can try many set-up changes, you can try to see what is really helpful and you can write it down and maybe try it in real life,” Gryazin explains. “And when you try it in real life you notice it is so close. That’s why I love this game: because it represents set-up changes [well].”
And nothing legitimises RBR’s real-world credentials more than a real rally driver who’s claimed three wins and 17 WRC 2 podiums to date.
Why wasn’t there a Richard Burns Rally sequel?
Unfortunately for all at Warthog Sweden, the studio nosedived into oblivion, much like a poorly-judged Mineshaft jump.
Bizarrely, it was all down to a little-known handheld console called the Gizmondo.
In 2004, just after RBR’s release, Swedish tech company Tiger Telematics acquired Warthog, renaming it Gizmondo Europe, under the proviso it would develop titles for Tiger Telematics’ prospective Gizmondo handheld console.
However, the Gizmondo turned out to be a disaster, eventually bankrupting the company. On reflection, it’s clear to see why, as the firm’s spending, headed by its mastermind Stefan Eriksson, was completely out of control.
A star-studded London launch party, featuring the likes of Busta Rhymes, Pharrell Williams, Sting and …errr… Dannii Minogue gave the device gravitas it didn’t deserve, with Eriksson arriving in a rather spicy-looking Ferrari Enzo.
Sadly, the Enzo would be destroyed soon afterwards, with shady post-scripts casting a foul shadow on the whole affair, ultimately leading to job losses for many talented – and wholly blameless – people.
Eriksson’s spending also led to him driving a Gizmondo-sponsored Ferrari 360 GTC in the 2005 24 Hours of Le Mans, with an expensive licensing deal to produce Chicane: Jenson Button Street Racing unveiled (the game never released, so was more cul-de-sac than chicane).
Eriksson was subsequently snowed under by litigation, eventually being charged with embezzlement and weapons charges in California before being deported back to his native Sweden to face further drug and assault sentences.
The whole sorry scenario is much darker and more brutal than Noiker ever was.
With the demise of Warthog, the takeover of SCi Games by Square Enix, and the tragic death of Burns in 2005, an RBR sequel simply could not happen.
Mods vs rocks
From the outset, RBR’s developers always had modding in mind: “This whole system will be open for modding,” declared Game Producer Pete Hickman in a pre-release Race Sim Central interview.
Although vanilla RBR is fondly remembered by many rally fans, mods are the reason it’s considered the connoisseur’s choice today. And we have the talented Guenter Schlupf – aka ‘WorkerBee’ – to thank for much of this.
Schlupf created ‘Next Generation Physics’ that powers today’s RBR communities, the most popular of which is the Hungarian-based Rallysimfans (which currently has around 80,000 registered accounts worldwide). Schlupf is the consistent heart of nearly all additional cars added to the platform, producing bespoke physics for every additional model.
His talents extended towards adding rear-wheel-drive cars to the sim by reverse-engineering the sim’s only front-wheel-drive vehicle, the MG ZR Super 1600. Impressive.
Schlupf also added a pace note editor and the ‘FixUp’ plugin, which, as the name suggests, fixed several vanilla RBR bugs, with his vast mechanical experience influencing his work.
“He’s unique, there is likely no one else in the world able to do such fundamental changes to how RBR works under the hood,” enthused AleksiP, RSF moderator and admin.
“All the work done for the NGP, all the RBR reverse-engineering… [it’s] really hard to understand how difficult it is and appreciate it enough.
“There would be no modern-day RBR without [his work]. And with his knowledge of vehicle dynamics and motorsport background we can trust that all cars are handling-wise equally top quality”, he continued, emphasising Schlupf’s role in advancing the state of RBR.
WorkerBee by name…
WorkerBee’s contributions have also influenced many other RBR modders: “Tom Smalley is the key driving force to modernise RBR stage authoring by making the RBR Blender add-on tool, allowing people to use Blender to create new RBR stages,” states RSF’s mika-n.
“But, WorkerBee is also one of the people to make it all possible with the vast knowledge he has of RBR internals and how the game behaves,” he continued, which certainly explains Schlupf’s credits across countless RBR utilities and content over the years.
But what prompted Schlupf to dip his toe into the RBR modding scene in the first place?
“I started modding RBR in the first place just because I was not satisfied with existing plugins back then, although I curse the day I started,” he says, half-jokingly.
“During testing, I was annoyed by those many bugs which made me publish the infamous FixUp plugin, as I thought sharing that stuff would be a good idea.
“Existing physics mods had ridiculously fast cars, which was not realistic at all, so after all that reverse engineering of the original game I took it as kind of challenge to show how it is done,” highlighting the German’s commitment to realism.
And that realism can come at a cost, with so many NGP-compatible car models around they take a long time to perfect and balance
BoP
“The problem is not making one car, but making car classes, and balancing performance between those and different eras,” acknowledges Schlupf. “That means weeks and months of research, collecting data, like homologation papers, manuals, articles etc.
“Then I have to find out what’s special about a particular car, how it behaves, what problems contemporary drivers said there were and so on. As soon as I am ready to go it should take about two full days of work to actually make the physics, plus additional testing,” he explained.
And if you’ve driven the latest version of his NGP physics you can tell his hard work has been worth it.
RallySimFans
As one of a few all-in-one RBR mods (which include the game files and access to a multitude of stages, cars and utilities), Rallysimfans – commonly referred to as ‘the Hungarian plugin’ – has emerged as the easiest way to play the sim today.
Thanks to patronage from YouTubers like GPLaps, Jimmy Broadbent and Aidan Millward, RSF’s community has grown exponentially, with championships regularly attracting hundreds of competitors across multiple classes – including historic vehicles.
“Back in early 2006-2007 there were several RBR online racing platforms, then WorkerBee released a new version of the NGP physics engine,” states mika-n on RSF’s origins.
“But, some of the other online plugins were slow to adopt the latest NGP build. People like Falcon77, RPeti and Lacka wanted to have an alternative RBR online plugin that always supported the latest NGP version and was above all free for everyone.
“Falcon77 was the person who started the RSF development process, and RPeti, Lacka and Sebgutkopf helped him code both the plugin and the website backend,” he elaborates.
The best
Ask AleksiP, and he’ll say RSF’s dedicated team of volunteers has a simple goal:
“To provide the overall best rally simulator experience for rally fans”.
“I bought my first sim wheel to play the DiRT Rally games [in 2018] but became bored of always driving the same stages,” he continues, detailing his first experience of RBR.
“I was instantly hooked after finding out RBR has dozens of classic Finland stages you can drive, and it’s free to install.”
Mika-n concurs: “At first, I was playing the game with my kids using nothing but the vanilla RBR version because I didn’t know about modded versions.
“Still, even the vanilla RBR immediately felt something unique compared to those other rally gaming titles and I could “feel” how the car behaved logically and real (as far as an amateur can make educated guesses about it),” he said.
The future
Considering the already Herculean advancements seen in RBR, and with over 6,000 active drivers per month, what does the future hold for RSF and RBR?
“We still have lots of good and feasible ideas on the drawing board: my long-term hope is that we would be able to modernise the server backend and website because those are still largely based in 2007,” states AleksiP.
“Making even small changes is a lot of work, It’s like a house of cards that can topple at any wrong move. Modernising it would bring massive possibilities for developers, and just making it a nicer overall experience for the current and new players,” he said, outlining RSF’s plans to make playing RBR a more user-friendly experience.
“I don’t want to give away too many secrets,” declares mika-n, “but there are plans to bring in even more online rally modes in RSF; new types of rallies and even game modes.
“But, in general around RBR, one of the recent big things was the modernised stage authoring with the RBR Blender addon tool. This made it possible for numerous new people to start working with high-quality stages.
“The next big thing here could be a modernised car model authoring tool,” he added, intriguingly.
“[It] will gift all players lots of free disk space, while still keeping all the same content,” counters AleksiP, addressing one of the big weaknesses of installing a lot of modded RBR content – hard drive capacity.
“But there are also some exciting new things for the game coming, so stay tuned in the RSF announcements,” he concluded.
On the other side of things…
So what does the original RBR team think of the game’s mod-based evolution?
“It is incredibly cool to see that the game has had a revival today and that so many people still play it and love it, said Piitulainen to Game Reactor.
“I check in on the community from time to time to read the news and see what the modders have accomplished and it always makes me happy to see how they build on what we once created.
“In fact, I recently built a simulator rig at home for my son and one of the games I immediately installed was Richard Burns Rally with the latest version of the Next Generation Physics mod,” he said, passing the baton onto the next generation of RBR fans in the process.
Superspecial
The legalities of RBR modding are naturally a talking point, with some car models lifted directly from other games. But there are a few hardy modders out there building bespoke RBR cars and stages that must be lauded.
One example is Gabiria – Legazpi 2004, authored by Come Over Gaming and the JLStages modding team, which replicates the real-world Basque stage in frightening detail. Its narrow ribbon of cambered, pollution-loaded asphalt is a rollercoaster ride in any car, especially in its default ‘damp’ condition.
It’s widely thought to be the most realistic of RBR’s tests – including those made by the original development team. Other stages, like Biskupice, Valstagna, Semetin, Carvalho de Rei and Vargassence, have also helped raise the bar in RBR, with modders like RallyGURU, Miro Kurek, Myra43, Martinez, Vasek Sourek and Moku-Moku (among many others) producing astonishing and original work for the community.
In another nod to the level of realism attained by modern-day RBR, real-world Czech stage Biskupice was created using laser-scan data, which was then interpreted and installed in-game by its creators Martin Bujáček, Lorenzo Clerici, Silvio Kuhm and Jan Kadeřábek.
Kadeřábek also played a big part in the RBR FMOD project, helping revolutionise the game’s engine and exhaust sounds, contributing massively to the game’s longevity and immersion.
The jump
One of the original RBR’s highlights was its stage design, with all of the game’s vanilla tests based on real locations (although many are reimagined facsimiles ‘inspired’ by their real counterparts).
This means that the single-track roads of Kielder Forest were simulated beautifully: cambers hooked your car towards apices in thrilling fashion. It remains a truly unrivalled sensation in sim racing.
The game’s other locations; Japan, USA, France, Finland and Australia, appeared along similar lines, divided among snow, asphalt and gravel surfaces.
And yes, that Mineshaft jump is real…
Stop.
Richard Burns Rally has changed in the last 20 years and changed often. While other rally games have come and gone, RBR has remained the number one choice for those seeking an authentic rallying challenge and is favoured by today’s professional rally drivers.
From overhauled sounds, graphics and WorkerBee’s physics, to experience-enhancing utilities like RBR Director’s Cut (which unlocks new replay camera features), RBR Roadbook and RBR HUD, RBR has progressed to unimaginable levels in recent years, with the RallySimFans mod providing players with free and easy access to the delights of virtual rallying.
Has any other rally sim or game come close to Richard Burns Rally’s realism in the 20 years since its PC release?
The final, unequivocal word comes from both WorkerBee, AleksiP and mika-n:
“No”.
It’s hard to disagree.
Richard Burns Rally Traxion community event
As a special tribute to RBR, Traxion has created a community RBR event on Rallysimfans (password: Traxion).
The six-stage event begins today (3rd September 2024) and lasts for a week, taking in some of the Traxion team’s favourite RBR tests using Rally 2 and R5 cars, with Traxion sim gloves available to the podium finishers.
Remember to send us your favourite moments via our Discord server (replay files welcome!) and we’ll compile these into a neat highlights reel to commemorate the rally!
And maybe there’ll be some special awards for the most spectacular incidents…
Also, check out our full interview with AleksiP, mika-n and WorkerBee here.
