With the comments above you would expect this product to be readily available in some of the major store chains in Southern California. It is has not been at the time of this writing.

The challenge part of getting to work properly on a PC might have been part of the problem. The game I suspect was originally developed for a platform other than the PC and then converted. Because of problems with such a conversion the marketing and effort to get it to the PC world may have fallen a little short.

One of the splash screens this game starts with is a NVidia 'The way it is meant to be played'. Try this with an Ge Force Mx4000 and you are going to have problems with ice racing unless you turn off the antilansing.

To get the program to work properly on my machine I had to turn off all the McAfee programs associated with computer security I was using.

Is it worth going through some effort to get this game working on your machine given what else is out there? Compared to the other motor sport games out there is none that have quality of graphics combined with game play this one has in my experience (Need for Speed, Colin McRae, and EA Sports).

This is a three CD set game. The price at this writing is about ten dollars. If you are not afraid to play around with things a bit to get them to work this would be a good one to get. Although it is a toll call you can still get technical support on this product.

"Good but not perfect!", This game is good but still I feel there is a little bit lag time (around 1/5 second) between my Logitech MOMO Force Feedback Wheel USB and the wheel from the game. I also own a NASCAR 2003 SEASON. Compare with these two games, I like NASCAR 2003 SEASON more because it has no steeling wheel lag time.

The graphic is good and clear, easy to manage option setting and the fast racing mode which I like most whenever I have a few minutes to spend before I go out for a dinner with my girlfriend. :)

Anyway, forom the price to the game, this is "almost" a must own game. If you are very tricky racing gamer, you can also concider NASCAR 2003 SEASON which is the best game that I played so far.

"An addictive game, with just a few laughable flaws", I love Rallisport Challenge, and just like the people I love, I've had to love it with all of its flaws. This game is a mix of majestic graphics, realistic off-road driving physics, and ridiculously exaggerated speed. Don't kid yourself: if at any time, you slow to below 90 mph (and that means sharp hair-pin turns), you'll finish last. This game actually made me a Rally fan, and you can imagine my shock when I watched a WRC rally on TV, only to see the pro's sliding through turns and taking jumps at 60 mph! That's right, Colin McRae, Marcus Gronholm, and Markko Martin couldn't win a single race in "Beginner" mode in this game! This makes me wonder if Rallisport Challenge wouldn've have been better named as "Rallisport Blitz," and released by Midway as part of their arcade sports lineup.
That said, Rallisport Challenge is quite addicting. I've spent four hours at a time on this game, and I was never a race fan before. Mastering the art of the powerslide through tight turns on perilous mountain roads is joyous. You'll have to figure out the technique on your own, however, as there's no hint in the game manual, or tutorial in the game. I fear too many people will give up on the game before their skill-level improves, and miss out on the fun. Speaking of fun, here are a few fun facts you'll learn from this game:
1. A rock the size of your fist can destroy a 500 hp, 1230 kg rally car.
2. Rally cars are filled with helium. Any bumps in the road, especially in turns, will, best case, render your car uncontrollable for a while as you wait for your tires to touch the ground again, or, worst case, send your car sailing off a cliff into the sunset with air traffic control clearance.
3. A 500 hp, 1230 kg rally car at 145 mph is no match for a flimsy wooden advertising billboard on the roadside. In fact, the car will do three or four backflips in the air if you hit one.
4. Your AI opponents will all finish to within a nanosecond of eachother. If you don't finish first, you'll finish last.
5. Your AI opponents will seem to get a 5-second head-start. I'm asking the FIA to check their cars for nitrous boosters. Could be quite the scandal.
6. A few levels have you racing head-to-head with three other cars. This is nothing more than a "crash-up derby." If you don't ram that stupid Saab off the road quickly, he'll do it to you every time you get a lead.
7. Your co-driver insists on reading off the turns several miles in advance. You'd better have a good memory, otherwise you'll be confused as you enter a left turn as he's yelling "hard right!" That "hard right" won't be for a few more miles. We're having him tested for stimulant use. We'll get back to you on that.
If you can view these game issues with a sense of humor, and be prepared to spend a little time learning to control the cars, you'll find yourself as addicted to this game as I am.
One last piece of advice: play responsibly - don't get behind the wheel for at least 30 minutes after playing Rallisport Challenge.

The game comes on three CD-ROM's and the breadth that this suggests clearly shows through with more cars and tracks than you can shake a stick-shift at. There are four modes of racing - the classic solo rallying against the clock, the fictitious NASCAR-bumping race with four cars in a dirt and asphalt oval, another fictitious race with four cars in an ice oval, and the Pikes Peak style hill climb. In the core "career" mode, you will need to race in all of these events to accumulate points and unlock more tracks and cars.

The terrain representation is the most noteworthy on the list of merits. For the first time on a PC rally game, the sense of uneven terrain is truly frightening. Banked turns and cambered roads look and feel authentic, especially in the Hill Climb event, where you can actually see the terrain just above your head that the upcoming off-camber hairpin turn is leading into - the sense of going uphill has never been captured better. Owners of Geforce3 or higher and ATI Radeon 8500 and higher graphics cards will especially appreciate the shadow and lighting effects, especially on ice, where the bright glare of the surface is captured convincingly. The downside of the arcade approach is that the roads are all extremely wide to allow plenty of room to slide around in, unlike the claustrophobic narrow roads seen at real rally events, lending a particularly inauthentic feel.

The driving dynamics, while clearly in the arcade camp, do break some new territory. Real rally cars are notoriously difficult to turn in. Rallisport captures that more than any other rally game before it - if you simply charge into a turn and crank the steering wheel, very little will happen except that you will plow straight ahead into the tree at the outside of the turn. You will need to utilize real life rally techniques such as the pendulum turn to rotate and begin sliding the vehicle into a turn and this will require some adjustment from past rally games that did not bring this initial understeer into stark relief. That said, the controllability of the vehicle slide clearly shouts "arcade fun", not "simulator".

Disappointments include the lack of a large dust plume on dirt tracks, an awesome sight in real rallies that I would have expected would be possible by now with today's computing power. And although the cars differ in power delivery, the cars all share the same 8000-rpm redline and vaccuum cleaner sound effects, from the 1.6 liter normally aspirated engine to the turbocharged Group-B monsters. Furthermore, some details show a lack of thorough testing - the gearbox options (short, medium, tall) effect only the top two gears which, although not optimal, may be fine except that when you select "short", fifth gear is actually shorter than fourth gear and sixth gear is barely taller than fourth gear.

A Pentium 1.8 GHz and GeForce4 Ti4200 is plenty good to turn on almost all of the eye candy options at 1024x768. However, the program did curiously un-mount one of my drives that I had mounted as my "Program Files" directory during the installation process. If you don't know what this means then you probably do not have a set-up like mine and do not need to worry about it - the game has run without crashing for many weeks now on my Windows 2000 set-up.

"Best Rally Game EVER!", I was a little skeptical about this game because I hadn't heard much about it, but this is the most detailed and realistic game out there. You do need a hefty video card though, I use a 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4200 with no flaws. It is definitely recommended if you have a 1Ghz processor or better for this game to run good. The car models are better than Playstation2 quality (gran turismo 3) and there is a huge car selection. Great game for everyone.