F355 Challenge Network Race Functionality Restored!

Well this one came out of the blue! The “Network Race” functionality for F355 Challenge has been restored thanks to flyinghead. A very nice surprise for sure! So, you might notice I’m not using the words here “online multiplayer” and there’s a good reason for that. F355 Challenge doesn’t feature true online multiplayer in the traditional sense. The game’s “Network Race” mode works by allowing up to 16 players to race individually with their times are compared at the end. Ghosts for all players are downloaded after the race, the player is disconnected, and then shown a replay of the race with all the ghosts.

It’s a bit of a strange (and very barebones) way to go about the online mode in this game but I’m sure Sega had their reasons. Obviously 16 players in real-time would not be possible over a dial-up connection but they could have easily limited the number of racers to get over this issue. Maybe Yu Suzuki didn’t want to compromise in this area or maybe they were on a time crunch and didn’t have time to implement true online play before launch. Who really knows.

In any case, regardless of the limited online functionality, it’s always great to see another game brought back online! Huge thanks to flyinghead for his work on this! It should be noted that as with most new servers, it’s a work-in-progress and there may be bugs. If you run into any issues, you can report them in the Dreamcast-Talk thread here. I should also note that as of this post, it’s not possible to play the Japanese version online due to the required Dricas authentication.

If you’d like to try this out for yourself, DreamPi users will automatically be connected to the server. For other dial-up connection methods, just set your DNS to 46.101.91.123.