V-Nice looking GBA game

Video footage of Infogrames' V-Rally 3 on the GameBoy Advance indicates that developers are finally pushing the GBA beyond the generally accepted boundaries of Super Nintendo and Mega Drive emulation. Although the quality of first party games and updates on the system has been quite high, many publishers have been keen to cash in on the opportunity to resurrect familiar franchises which never made the jump from 16-bit upwards, and it's only now that we're starting to see technically accomplished games breaking with tradition. Curiously, it's a driving game which first puts distance between GBA graphics and the pinnacles of 16-bit output. V-Rally 3 may not look like RalliSport Challenge, but the developer has the unmistakable staples of the rally game - loud, booming and varied sound effects for everything, the varied, slithery-sliding physics of dirt, tarmac and snow tracks, and realistically modeled vehicles - a combination of elements perhaps conducive to a good game, even if V-Rally hasn't exactly bowled us over in the past. It certainly moves a bit, with plenty of detail on screen and a handsome framerate, albeit with the addition of a certain amount of clipping. You can still see a decent way down the road. Fluid animation, particularly from the in-car view with the driver's hands on the wheel and gear stick, and the bumping up and down of the display helps to inexpensively recreate the feeling of the world rally circuit, at least from the TV spectator's perspective, and the sodden tracks and mud-streaked vehicles of V-Rally 3 should be with us on GBA and PS2 this summer. Although this latest footage of the game has yet to make it out onto the open Internet, IGN has a collection of assets from earlier in the year, which you can view here. Related Feature - V-Rally 3 GBA screenshots