Road Rash Longplay (Mega Drive/Genesis)
66Developed and published by Electronic Arts in 1991
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Don your leathers, grab your club and open up the throttle - it's time to check out Road Rash, another classic racing game from the 16-bit era of video gaming.
For those who might have wondered, the game is named after the condition suffered by bikers who are unfortunate to come into contact with tarmac at speed, turning the rider into a human-sized lump of corned beef in the process (bikers wear leather for a reason...).
The player takes control of a 'Rasher', a member of a biker group that holds a series of less-than-legal street races across the sunny state of California. The game is broken up into five divisions, each featuring a set number of races, each longer and more difficult than the last. To qualify for the next division, the player must finish each race in at least fifth position or higher - the better your position, the more money you earn.
Each of the races is a point-to-point race along a two-lane highway filled with rival bikers, traffic and all manner of other hazards. Starting at the back of the pack, you must work your way through the pack using fair means or foul, foul definitely being the more fun option! Another rider in your way? No problem - it's perfectly possible to knock him off with a tell-timed punch, or kick him into the path of an oncoming vehicle. You even get to savour your ruthlessness as you watch the hapless chump eat asphalt in your rear-view mirrors as you speed off.
As the saying goes, pride comes before a fall and never was a truer word spoken. Your opponents are equally prepared to take you out of the race, some of them have even carrying clubs to make their job just that tiny bit easier. In a twist of fate, it's possible to grab weapons out of opponents hands by hitting the attack button just as they take aim for a swing - they'll soon be laughing on the other side of their helmets when you smack them over the head with their own truncheon!
Despite the emphasis placed on fighting with rival bikers, there's very little reason to do so other than the sheer fun of it. Trading blows puts you at risk of getting knocked off your bike and only serves to slow you down. No money is earned through fighting, so it's a lot simpler to just overtake riders than fight them. I would have loved to see the player being offered money to take out a specific rider by a shady sponsor or something, but this was not to be.
Money earned during each race can be spent in the bike shop, accessible by pressing 'C' during the race results screen. Each of the bikes on offer varies in terms of power, handling and price; the best bikes cost a considerable amount of money and it takes quite some time before you can upgrade.
The game boasts some great visuals for the time. Look closely at the horizon and you'll notice multiple levels of parallax scrolling that shift position as the road rises and falls, giving a sense of depth to the world. The sprite scaling is also particularly good, with roadside objects and bikers increasing in size as the player gets closer to them. There's a surprising amount of detail on screen, made all the more impressive by the rear-view mirrors showing the world behind you.
However, all of this takes quite a heavy toll on the console's hardware, often sending the frame-rate plunging into single figures. The start of each race is especially sluggish due to the number of bikers on screen and this makes cornering extremely difficult since there's little opportunity to react to the road in time. Later stages often have 'S' bends where the player will appear to warp from one side of the road to the other because the console just doesn't have enough grunt to render all the frames.
There are also a couple of quirks with some of the art assets, most notably the road cars that appear to be driven by members of the Blue Man Group - look closely and you can clearly see that the occupants have have bright blue heads!
Whilst on the weaker points of the game, it's worth noting that the difficulty becomes a problem about half way through the game. Even with the fastest bikes, you'll be hard pressed to catch up with the pack leaders, regardless of how well you actually ride. I found I had to downgrade to a bike with a higher power rating simply to stand a chance of finishing in the top three.
Whatever problems the game may have, the gameplay and generally excellent controls make up for most of it's shortcomings. I'm a big fan of point-to-point racers and, thanks to some of the longest courses in a game of this sort, Road Rash is the first racer set in the real world. Spiced up with some cool in-game music from Rob Hubbard and Mike Bartlow, this remains one of my favourite racers from the 90's and is still immensely fun to play.
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