Road Rash (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
61🕹️ Road Rash was released on 2 disks and published by Electronic Arts in 1992. Many reviews criticised the game for being slow and not much fun, so lets see if it can redeem itself.
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Production Notes:
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Ripped: 19th April 2017 (to level 2), and 22nd - 23rd June 2018 (level 3)
Edited: 22nd June 2018 - 27th Dec 2018
Narrated: 6th Aug 2018
I remember being very disappointed with this game back in the day, especially compared to Lotus, Vroom and Super Hang-on. Something about the bike felt unresponsive and way too slow to be fun. Back then, I didnt know you could move through the levels, I thought the game had 6 stages and that was it. I cant remember now what happened, but somehow during the editing I found out the player could upgrade their bike. This was a new revelation, and so I recorded a bit more of the game, using the password from where I left off on level 2, and upgrading to the better bikes. Thats why the recording sessions are a year apart.
There was something else which is different today than back in the day, the fact this game was meant to run on the faster NTSC hardware. I remember the day when I discovered NTSC games run full screen and slightly faster. Suddenly the black letterbox below the PAL image made sense, and this meant it was NTSC compatible. I made sure this game was recorded in NTSC, but I forgot to change my usual FPS from 50 to 60, so this captured in NTSC 50fps. Thanks again to Amiga evangelist Shot97 for this almighty revelation.
I wanted to get all 44 shows pre-edited before August, which left me August and September to narrate them all. By this point in the narrations, I was falling back (habitually) towards my old style, but you can hear my voice is more relaxed. I tried a new jump-cut method of chopping this footage down, without so many white sweeps to bridge the cuts, so hopefully viewers get this and they dont think the video is broken. Of course the comparison zone had to compare this with the Sega versions, and with the medium-speed bike it looked the fastest and the best. This was another joke on my part. ;)
Danscore:
Road Rash is notorious when played on PAL hardware as a missed opportunity. In NTSC, the first bike is so slow, even the improved frame rates cant stop the game from feeling pedestrian. The faster bikes show what the engine can really do, but by this time, the player has had to slog through some really boring roads travelling at bicycle speeds, and its easy to fall off the bike and drop to the back of the pack. If the game had started with a semi-fast bike to begin with, and was optimised for Pal displays and faster CPUs, this could have been up there with Super Hang-on as a well respected racing game. As it is, the graphics are ok, the music is dull and forgettable, and sound effects are limited to clangs, "Yeah"s and "Uurggh" when someone gets hit. Road Rash does become fun and addictive later, when the levels run fast and get more complex, but its hard to forgive the flaky start which most players said was decidedly average. I'd give it a 7 if the PAL frame rate wasnt so choppy, so it gets 6.5. I notice Lemon gave this 7.5 - so there are a lot of fans out there ready to forgive it for any shortcomings. Although dont expect No Second Prize.