Post#3 » Mon Aug 17, 2020 9:58 am
Could have something to do with it's arcade roots, perhaps? Out of all the games you mentioned, Sega Rally is the only one to have an arcade presence. It's possible the legislation doesn't account for arcade titles, and this issue was then either forgotten or there's some legal workaround for ports which doesn't exist for straight-to-console titles. Though the former seems more likely than the latter. I will assume, due to the liveries appearing in the arcade titles, that arcades have to follow different legislation to home games.
The other aspect could be regions of release. Legislation on brand advertising is unique to each country (moreso in the 90s than now as the EU wasn't quite as established in this area at the time). Sometimes companies don't release in countries that are restrictive, or they adapt a game for that specific country only (See Wolfenstein's lack of Nazi imagery in the German release, despite it existing in every other country in Europe). With the Dreamcast, and SEGA in general, lacking financial and strong third-party support it's possible they simply evaded releasing in specific countries. Sega Rally 2 had a jumbled release as it was, with a fully online Japanese edition, then the PAL release was done with a solid 30fps (which angered 60fps purists) and finally a US edition with a choppy 60fps frame rate (According to Wikipedia, this is the correct order of release). The game had work done in each region, clearly, and yet the liveries remained.
I can't get any more specific information, but it's possible that if a country (for example Germany) took issue with the liveries due to a legal issue, SEGA may have simply chosen not to release in that country. A PAL/EU version still exists, but it would not be officially available in that specific country. This happens currently with EA titles due to loot-boxes, gamers in Belgium can't buy the game locally due to the law (To be fair, I'm glad as I loathe loot boxes). In 1999 this legal difference from country to country would have been even broader. It's clear there's no issue with arcade law, and that Japan, the US and the UK seem to not take too much issue with the liveries - as I can verify the game was released in those countries. Sadly I can't get a breakdown of the EU release to see if any countries actually rejected the title or called for changes. It might be easier if you have any information on which countries hold tobacco and alcohol promotion restrictions, and when those laws came into place. I'm pretty certain we have them in the UK now, but clearly we didn't back then.
The craziest version of this I saw was Carmageddon on the N64. Carmageddon was infamous for being a driving game which gave you extra points for running down civilians/pedestrians (inspired clearly by the movie Death Race 2000 starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine). On the N64, Nintendo insisted the game couldn't have pedestrians killed so they were replaced with zombies - killing the undead is perfectly fine... except in Germany for some reason. The German version of Carmageddon 64 replaced the zombies with dinosaurs! I haven't seen it in action, no idea how that works tbh, but I remember the furore about it in UK N64 mags of the time. Very strange.