The Sega Rally Championship simulates driving on different surfaces, with different friction properties, with the car's handling changing accordingly.

The music for the arcade game was composed by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, while the Saturn version's soundtrack consisted of a combination of newly composed music by Naofumi Hataya and arrangements of the arcade originals arranged and produced by Takayuki Hijikata, previously released on the album Sega Rally Championship Ignition.

Three cars are featured in the game; Didier Auriol's third generation Toyota Celica GT-Four and Juha Kankkunen's Lancia Delta HF Integrale which are both available from the start, and Sandro Munari's Lancia Stratos HF which is unlocked by finishing Lakeside in first place in the Saturn version of the game,[8] or by using an easter egg in the arcade version.

[11] Sega Rally Championship was directed by Kenji Sasaki, a former Namco employee known for his work on Ridge Racer.

Senior programmer Riyuchi Hattori added: "Originally there was talk of using another car from Toyota, but we couldn't find a good one.

[4] Fiat also made a gentlemen's agreement with the developers allowing the use of official logos and such in Sega Rally Championship; there was no formal sponsorship deal for the game.

[4][14] Mizguchi recounted: "Our designers went back to the arcade version and worked out the locations, drew pictures and captured the atmosphere and the feeling of distance.

[13] The Sega Saturn version was rushed to the North American market in order to take advantage of the Christmas shopping season.

[17] By the time of its release in Japan and Europe, the development team had completed several additional graphical improvements, bug fixes, and front-end options.

[45] In the United States, it was one of the top six best-selling arcade games of 1995, receiving the Platinum Award from the American Amusement Machine Association (AAMA).

Next Generation reviewed the arcade version of the game, stating that "Rally's downside is the car's indestructibility: no matter how much you slam into either opponents or banks, your racer [...] receives not a scratch, nor can you flip or leave the road [...] And some might say the control is a fault, too; our response?

Next Generation praised the Saturn version's "down-and-dirty feel", "truly phenomenal high-speed visuals", and "quick, responsive control".

Game Informer's Paul was more effusive, rating the Saturn port 9.25/10 for its "far better racing feel" and superior graphics to Daytona.

[27] Sega Saturn Magazine praised the difficulty of unlocking the secret course and secret car, and remarking that "whilst there's enough drag, slide action and difficulty wrestling with the controls to convince you the programmers know what it's like to drive a rally car, there's never so much realism that you'd have to know how to drive one yourself to play the game".

[50] Both of the sports reviewers for Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the Saturn version an 8.5 out of 10, saying it "has all of the action and adventure of its arcade cousin.

Critics generally commented that the fun gameplay is still wholly intact, but that the conversion lacks many features standard to PC racing games[22][30][33] and suffers from mediocre frame rates except when playing in low-resolution mode, in which case it instead suffers from having lower detail and more pixelation than the Saturn version.