World Rally Championship (series)

World Rally Championship is a video game series made by Evolution Studios between 2001 and 2005. The series consists of five original games released for the Sony PlayStation 2 console, and one Sony PSP port, all based on the World Rally Championship using official drivers, cars and tracks. The series will return in 2010.

World Rally Championship
World Rally Championship was released for PlayStation 2 in November 2001. The game features FIA licensed cars, stages and drivers from the 2001 season and has a career mode allowing the player to work through the World Rally Championship season. The game also features damage simulation in the form of visual damage as well as performance damage if the player crashes.

WRC II Extreme
WRC II Extreme is the sequel to WRC World Rally Championship and was released in Europe and Japan on November 27, 2002. It contains teams, drivers, cars and rallies from the 2002 WRC season. It also includes "extreme" cars designed by the teams. The main soundtrack to WRC II Extreme was produced by the Chemical Brothers. Additionally, the tracks "Come with Us/The Test" and "Star Guitar" from the Chemical Brothers album, Come with Us (2002) were also used in the game.

WRC 3
WRC 3 is the second sequel to WRC World Rally Championship and was released on 21 November 2003 in Europe, and 27 May 2004 in Japan. It contains teams, drivers, cars and rallies from the 2003 WRC season. It also contains Extreme and Concept cars, designed by the teams.

WRC 4
WRC 4 is the fourth installment of the WRC World Rally Championship series and was released on 22 October 2004 in Europe and 7 April 2005 in Japan. It contains teams, drivers, cars and rallies from the 2004 WRC season. It also contains Extreme cars designed by the teams, S1600 cars and Group N4 cars.

WRC: Rally Evolved
WRC: Rally Evolved or WRC5 is the last of the series for the PS2. It was released exclusively in Europe on 14 October 2005. The game includes teams, drivers, cars and rallies from the 2005 WRC season. It also contains Extreme and Concept cars designed by the teams, S1600 cars and Group B cars from the 1980s.

World Rally Championship (PSP)
In 2005, British game studio Traveller's Tales and SCEE developed a new WRC title for the PlayStation Portable based on WRC: Rally Evolved, which had recently been released on the PS2. The PSP port was jointly released by Namco and Sony Computer Entertainment on 1 November 2005 as WRC, WRC: FIA World Rally Championship and World Rally Championship in the UK, Japan and the US, respectively.

Like its predecessor, World Rally Championship is based around the 2005 season and features 30 fully-deformable 2005 WRC, Evolution and Extreme spec cars. In championship mode, players have the opportunity to play through the entire WRC season as any one of the 17 official 2004 registered drivers from the six official manufacturers, participating in 16 official rallies spanning five continents and 16 countries. Additionally, there are 19 bonus stages and downloadable content available to users. In addition to championship mode, there are also quick rally, time trial and single rally single-player game modes. World Rally Championship also supports various ad hoc multiplayer modes, such as wireless time trial, turn-based time trial, turn-based single rally, and turn-based championship.

However, unlike the PS2 version, the PSP remake does not include damage simulation&mdash;though visual damage to the vehicle can be seen.

World Rally Championship 2010
A new WRC game will be published by Black Bean Games developed by Milestone S.r.l.. It will be released on October 8, 2010 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC formats.