![]() ![]() Road Rash is an excellent game and still plays extremely well. Attitude was the in-thing back then, and the game reeks with forced irreverence. In all though the presentation is horribly dated. Especially if you kicked them off their bikes in a previous run. In between races you can "schmooze" in the menu/bar area and have some of them trash talk you. There's also a garish, charmless art style of distorted latex-looking characters to pick from. A big selling point at the time was the proper soundtrack the game had, featuring rock luminaries like Soundgarden and Swervedriver - though bizarrely not as in-game music. Because all 90s games had to have full motion video as and where they could, there's plenty of naff cut scenes of the programming crew pretending to be bikers and lots of shots of bikes. But like the originals, the AI competitors are not motorcycle legends - they are as prone as you to screw ups and believe me, it's very, very satisfying to see a character you hate spread themselves across an oncoming windscreen. This is truly the stuff vendettas are made of. They clobbered as hard as you hit, and were adept at smacking you into what the town planners like to call "street furniture". The main difference was that the computer players had a bit more nous about them. It also added very little to what went before - why change a winning formula? The visuals and sounds kicked ass, the sense of speed was unlike anything else, but it was virtually the same game - definitely no bad thing. Befitting a new system's launch title, it looked much better and far more technically advanced than its MegaDrive predecessor. These core game-playing mechanics were left untouched in the PlayStation version. Sounds like the stuff moral panics are made of? You betchya. ![]() You can knock them off as you're hurtling down the freeway at 200kph, give a good clout with a nightstick or smack 'em square in the face with a chain. Sounds like a million other racing games with career modes. As you earn cash from racing you can buy newer, faster bikes that give you an edge on lower levels, and enable you to keep up with the pack on the higher. Along the way you have to avoid roadside obstacles, cops, and cars in pursuit of a qualifying position. In all the iterations you are a rookie player who participates in an illegal race. If you weren't around back then and have not been playing it to death lately (like me), Road Rash is a simply brilliant concept. It's a shame, but nevertheless they haven't addled the warm memory that attends the franchise. Of what came later - Road Rash 3D, Road Rash Jailbreak, and Road Rash 64 - well, they were tosh. Road Rash began life on Sega's MegaDrive in 1991 and spawned a series of conversions and sequels, of which this was the last decent iteration. And, if truth be told, it's a game I've been wanting to write about since, well, forever. ![]() Identical versions were also available for the 3DO and Sega Saturn. And this time it's the turn of the classic racer-cum-beat-'em-up Road Rash, which hit the original PlayStation in 1995. While we're on a nostalgic tip, let's do a proper post about an ancient video game. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |