Rally-X (Japanese: ラリーX, Hepburn: Rarī-Ekkusu) is a maze chase arcade video game developed in Japan and Germany by Namco and released in 1980.

The objective is to collect yellow flags that are scattered around an enclosed maze while avoiding collision with red-colored cars that pursue the player.

[6] Mazes scroll in the four cardinal directions and are clustered with dead ends, long corridors, and stationary boulders that are harmful to the player.

[7] The player has a radar beneath their fuel meter, which displays their current position on the map as well as the location of the flags and red cars.

[9][10] The third level and every fourth thereafter is a bonus round (called a "Charanging Stage"), where the objective is to collect the flags in a certain amount of time.

[11] It was produced as a successor to Head On (1979), an older arcade game from Sega that similarly involved collecting items in a maze while avoiding enemy cars that pursued the player.

The programming was done by Kazuo Kurosu, who went on to design the multi-directional shooter Bosconian (1981), and featured music from Pac-Man composer Toshio Kai.

[12] Namco presented Rally-X at the 1980 Amusement & Music Operators Union (AMOA) tradeshow in Chicago, Illinois, alongside Pac-Man, King & Balloon, and Tank Battalion.

An often-repeated story is that out of the games presented, specifically Pac-Man, the attending industry analysists believed Rally-X was the stand-out and the one destined to be successful.

[18] Due to licensing restrictions, HAL changed the game's characters to mice and cats and released it in North America as Radar Rat Race.

[33] Dick Pearson of RePlay highlighted its colorful visuals and sound effects in a preview from the tradeshow, comparing its gameplay favorably to Pac-Man and writing that it "shows promise as an entertaining maze video game".

[8] In 1991, Gamest listed it as being a "masterpiece" alongside New Rally-X, and believed its underwhelming critical and commercial reception was attributed to it being ahead of its time.

1, Computer and Video Games Ed Lomas said Rally-X was fun at first, but quickly became repetitive and suffered from poor movement controls.

[35] Brett Alan Weiss of AllGame was similarly mixed in his review from 1998, where he claimed its only noteworthy aspects were the "merciless" difficulty and smoke screen weapon.

[9] Retro Gamer staff were positive towards its colorful graphics, smooth scrolling, and increasing level of difficulty, writing it makes for a unique derivative of Pac-Man and was worth playing in its own right.

Green believes Rally-X failed to catch on as it lacked Pac-Man's abstract characters and design, and was too similar to other driving games from the era.

[14] Rally-X is credited as being one of the first games to feature continuous background music[36] and a bonus round, predating Sega's Carnival,[37] which was released in June 1980.

[51] Namco Bandai's "game consulting" service, which provides insight on the company's design philosophies to clients, is named Special Flag,[52] as are its indoor restaurants located in its VR Zone amusement centers.