SHIRO! Media Group debuted its new Monthly Community Challenge on Thursday, kicking off the series with “Sega Touring Car Championship.”
The contest runs from Thursday through the end of February and boasts 12 prizes in the form of custom made T-shirts and patches for top performers.
It is broken into three categories: Arcade Side best two-lap times and Saturn Side time attack on the Country, Grundwald or Brickwall circuits.
Two more competitions as part of the month-long challenge will begin Feb. 14. The first to post sub 28-second and 38-second laps on the Urban and Boom Town circuits, respectively, will also also take home prizes. Those circuits can be “unlocked” by setting the Saturn’s internal clock to Feb. 14, 1998.
Those interested in participating must use real Sega Saturn hardware, and optical drive emulators are allowed. Software emulation as well as Action Replay and PseudoSaturn cheats are prohibited.
Participants also must use one of the following vehicles: Toyota Supra GT, Mercedes C-Class, Alfa Romeo 155V6TI or Opel Calibra V6 with either automatic or manual transmission.
Custom tuning of cars is permitted on the Saturn Side only.
Of course, photographic evidence of times is mandatory, but videos and online leaderboard submissions are highly encouraged.
Each category will have separate rankings for PAL and NTSC submissions, according to co-organizer Rasputin, as the game runs at slightly different speeds in each format.
“We didn’t want to (disqualify) those European folks with unmodded Saturns or (optical drive emulators),” Rasputin said. “We want it to be as open as possible.”
A tutorial on how to revive the Saturn’s NetPlay capabilities, allowing for online leaderboard submissions, can be found on the SHIRO! website.
Times will be submitted to the SHIRO! Community Challenge Discord channel and posted to the online leaderboard under the “SHIRO!” category.
SHIRO! Discord server member Xiden, who previously revived the game’s online leaderboards and continues to manage them, said around midday Thursday two official times already had been posted with “several submissions” on the way.
Those seeking more information and regular updates on the Community Challenge are encouraged to join the SHIRO! Discord server. Also be sure to check out the challenge hype video on the group’s YouTube channel:
“I see this as being another way the community can be active alongside the podcast chats, the general discord, and the online tournaments,” Rasputin said. “It is a little less competition focused than the NetLink tourneys, but more gameplay first compared to the general chat. It’s more things to engage with ultimately.”
“Sega Touring Car Championship” for the Saturn saw an initial release date of Nov. 7, 1997, in PAL regions and later that month in North America and Japan. The game is based on the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft ’95 and ’96 series that pitted prominent European automakers at the time against one another.
Cecil H4rvey is a contributor to SHIRO! Media Group, writing stories for the website on NetLink League events. H4rvey cut his teeth on Sega Genesis games as a kid in the ’90s, and his love Sega was reignited like many during the 2020 pandemic, when he discovered the massive amount of innovation in the retro scene. He purchased a model one Japanese Saturn and installed a Fenrir ODE in 2022 and never looked back. H4rvey joined SHIRO! on the heels of a career as a newspaper reporter in the Rocky Mountain West.
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