Dishing the dirt on DiRT Rally

Read the secrets from DiRT Rally with fascinating insider reveals

DiRT Rally is a brilliant racing video game. If you’re a fan of rally driving and love twisty and challenging edge-of-your-seat racing, you’ll get to compete in a variety of staged events when you play DiRT, including action sequences on the tarmac and a host of off-road terrains. Featuring a number of different iconic rally cars, and competing in a variety of classes, you’ll be able to emulate your favourite rally driving legends when you play this game, and enjoying competing in classic and modern cars at famous rally locations, with the option to take part in rallycross and Pikes Peak gravel events.

DiRT Rally was developed by Codemasters and released to the general public on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One formats in April 2016 to very favourable reviews. We’re big fans of it here at Pop Up Arcade, and love a little rally racing, so were understandably delighted when we found some quirky insider knowledge about the game from Paul Coleman, the chief designer of the game, and self-proclaimed rally co-driver.

Having this information is pointless without sharing it with you, so here’s what he had to say. The co-driver calls are recorded during genuine rally game stages.

To make the game more authentic, the rally driver calls were recorded live in a D-Box motion seat whilst each stage was being driven. This ensured the sense of speed was present and you could hear the impact in the co driver’s voice. Stilo crash helmets were worn during this action with a full intercom set and this is why the recordings sound so accurate.

Attention to detail is everything The vehicle artists working on the game took their roles extremely seriously. Nothing was left to chance when they were modelling the vehicle interiors and their attention to detail was pretty amazing. So much so, they even captured the hand and fingerprint marks left by the vehicle owners for a truly authentic user experience.

The WWGFD Trophy is based on an actual person If you achieve the WWGFD Trophy in DiRT Rally you unlock an upgrade for one of your cars, and this award was actually created as a reference to a community member called Greg Flinchbaugh. Apparently, when the game was being developed the makers asked the wider community, “What do you like best about rally?” and Greg posted a pretty awesome reply. Afterwards, whenever they questioned anything to do with the game, the developers would ask themselves, “What would Greg Flinchbaugh do?” and decided to honour him in the guise of the WWGFD trophy!

There’s a lot of background detail in Dirt One of the best things about DiRT Rally is the authenticity of the game and how realistic the action looks as you wrestle and grapple your car through the various race stages. The scenery is stunning, and if you look carefully at some of the scenes, you’ll spot different types of wildlife crossing the road. Things to look out for include a squirrel in Finland, a Moose in Sweden and you’ll even see a fox in Wales. Plus if you look extra carefully in the Sweet Lamb Fan Zone in Wales, you’ll also spot a queue of people lining up for the loo!

The voice of the Rallycross spotter is a genuine presenter Listen to the voice of the rallycross spotter and if you are fan of the sport, his voice might sound a little familiar to you. This is Neil Cole, who is one of the actual presenters for the FIA World Rallycross broadcast, and spends most of his weekends in the spotter’s tower at rallycross events where he performs the post-race interviews.

Paul Coleman does the co-driver calls As well as being the chief designer on Dirt Rally, Paul Coleman also voices the co-driver calls in the game. In fact, the co-driver model is actually based on him, whereas the driver model is based on Jon Tucker who worked with Codemasters during the game development as their vehicle handling consultant.

Dirt Rally might have been called something else Although the final title of the game was Dirt Rally, one of the original working titles suggested was Dirt Pulse. Although quirky, it was decided to drop this working title and stick with the rally name which seemed to make more sense.

Dirt Rally was heavily praised by the Official PlayStation Magazine when it was first released in 2016 who said it was ‘the most exhilarating driving game Codemasters has created in years, and undoubtedly the best rally game on PS4’, which is pretty impressive.

Here at Pop Up Arcade, we enjoy our racing games and have the latest generation consoles so you and your friends can compete against one another in thrill-a-minute action.

Find out more and book a gaming party that keeps everyone entertained, you can call us on 0800 321 3941 or get in touch with us online.