Post by Ayen on Oct 28, 2020 18:48:11 GMT -5
Road Rash is a racing, vehicular combat game developed and published by EA Games and released on the Sega Genesis console to North America in September 1991. It stars you as a motorcycle racer going through different tracks to become the ultimate motorcycle racer. Spanning many sequels throughout various different consoles. Let’s see what the original Road Rash is all about.
Gameplay: Road Rash allows you to accelerate and stop your bike during a race as well as fight different racers throughout each track with either your bare hands or a weapon you can get if the enemy racer uses it on you. There is a meter for biker’s stamina, both you and other racers, and a meter for the bike, and if it runs out the bike will be wrecked and you’ll need to pay a repair build to continue to race.
While you’re racing you have to avoid cars, cows, deers, and trees to stay on your bike. Hitting any of them causes your biker to fall off his motorcycle and crash on the ground until he gets back on his bike. Sometimes you crash right before crossing the finish line in first place causing a rather funny finish race animation.
The game is very fast and very intense. Meaning that it becomes harder to avoid certain obstacles with how fast the game can go. No doubt thanks to Blast Processing which allowed Genesis to play games faster than their competitors. You can upgrade your bike throughout the game’s five levels and changing the bike will also change your biker’s appearance causing a different color helmet to appear on the screen when you race. All the other racers have the same outfit and they only change when you go up in level. You can only go up a level by completing a race in the first four spots.
Be careful because there are also cops in the game. Crash near a cop and they arrest you and you’ll have to pay a fine to continue the game. The game starts you out with 1,000 dollars and it goes up the more races you win. Run out of money to pay for fixing your bike or paying off police fines and it’s game over.
The game takes place in the state of California with locations such as San Francisco, Sierra Nevada, Napa Valley, and the Pacific Coast Highway. Each stage is as different as they can be given the Genesis’s limitations at the time and they’re fun to race in. The game is mostly single player, but you can race against a friend in multiplayer if you have a second person to join you. The game also has passwords so you can pick up where you left off in the game.
Story: The game is mainly a motorcycle racing game, so it doesn’t have much story. What it does have is different characters like Viper and Natasha who are among the other racers you race against, and at the beginning of each race one of them will talk to you either giving you advice or taunting you. It provides a nice element to the game seeing all the different characters speak.
Graphics: The graphics are very clean. You can clearly see your racer and the other racers and your surroundings in each track. It has aged very well for a game being made clear back in 1991 and it’s fun seeing all the different color outfits your racer and other racers will wear the further into the game you get.
Another thing that stands out about the game is its music. It has some classic 16 bit soundtracks that brings out the emotion of the game and gets you sucked into the feel of the game rather easily. I loved listening to the music the more I played, and it may be one of the better tracks of a 16 bit era video game on the Sega Genesis.
Flaws: I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t see much in the way of flaws. The game is as close to perfect as you can possibly get. The gameplay is fun, enjoyable, and challenging, and to quote a certain Colonel, “Age hasn’t slowed you down one bit.”
Summary When it comes down to it Road Rash is a fun racing game with a fighting mechanic that makes it stick out among other racing games of its kind, with clean graphics, a fitting soundtrack, and an intense and fast gameplay element that makes each race track suspenseful. I can think of nothing more to say other than…
Get It!
