1981. The port was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by the Japanese division of Commodore International. Due to licensing restrictions, HAL changed the game's characters to mice and cats and released it in North America as Radar Rat Race. Namco released a port for the MSX in 1984 that adopted the gameplay of New Rally-X, which was released in Europe by Argus Press Software under the Bug-Byte name. Dempa Shinbun developed versions for the Fujitsu FM-7, MZ-1500, and Sharp X1 computers in Japan the same year. Rally-X remained relatively obscure for many years until 1995, when it was included in the PlayStation compilation Namco Museum Vol. 1 along with six other Namco arcade games. The port uses a JAMMA emulator running the source code of the original, making it a near-perfect conversion. Rally-X has been included in several Namco compilations including Namco History Vol. 2 (1997), Microsoft Revenge of Arcade (1998), Namco Museum Battle Collection (2005), Namco Museum 50th Anniversary (2005), Namco Museum Virtual Arcade (2008), and Namco Museum Megamix (2010). In 1996, Rally-X was re-released for arcades as part of Namco Classic Collection Vol. 2. It has also appeared in several Namco "plug'n play" game controllers from Jakks Pacific. Rally-X is also included in both Pac-Man’s Arcade Party (2010) and Pac-Man’s Pixel Bash (2019). In 2021, Rally-X saw a digital release under the Arcade Archives label for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Reception The game was a commercial success in Japan, where it became the sixth highest-grossing arcade game of 1980, and Namco's third highest that year below Pac-Man and Galaxian. In contrast, the game was not as successful in North America. By July 1981, Midway had sold 2,500 Rally-X arcade machines, significantly less than the company's other releases at the time. 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". A writer for Cash Box provided similar comments, further applauding its scoring system and layer of strategy. 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. Staff considered it a successor to Head On, as well as being influential for the maze genre. In his review of Namco Museum Vol.