A few days ago the Digital Foundry team did a retro look back at the Road Rash series. It's a fantastic retrospective covering each game, some of the tech used as well as modern day options for playing some of them as sadly Electronic Arts left the series to die over 20 years ago.
Revisiting this in 2023 and this is still a good game that does some pretty stand out things, some of which still aren't replicated today but were especially impressive back in 1991. You take part in illegal street races against 14 other riders per race. Each race you get prize money depending on how you finish which you can pool up to buy newer faster bikes in between races. Road Rash is one of the first games I ever played that I remember allowing me to grind money to get more powerful equipment as you can replay races for more prizes and better positions if you don't do so well initially.
Speed of bikes isn't the only way to win though as road Rash had this kind of biker gang / thug mentality. You can bang into other riders knocking them into cars, punch them, kick them or occasionally steal clubs to smack them off their bike to watch them tumble away in your wingmirrors in an impressive display of tech. They of course can also do this to you too. There is nothing more humiliating then being kicked off your bike by an edgy biker called Rude Boy. One of Road Rash's unique features I did like was that when you do crash or get punched off you can get up and run to your bike to get back on and carry on. Your bike has a hp bar so can only crash so much meaning you do have to be careful. You equally need to be careful when running for your bike as you can get run over amusingly.
It has some other neat little features like police bikes patrolling you need to get away from or knock off. If you crash next to them you are in trouble. I also really like in between the races you get little scenes of the other bikers talking about each other or you in a display of friendship or rivalry like you were chatting before the race. It's a nice touch.
Where the game does fall down though feels a little bit due to the limitation of the tech at the time. Though it is impressive how they used multiple layers to get the scrolling screen, the display of the wingmirrors and scenery but the game unfortunately runs terribly. Anywhere between 8-10 frames per second. I ended up downloading the improved mod which increases the performance to 13-15 frames per second which makes it feel smoother to control without feeling like the spirit of the original is totally lost. Equally there is just a lack of variety in the tracks. 4 out of 5 of them are simply solid green with different shades and trees but feel all too similar except the music. The only stand out track is Palm Desert entirely for being yellow instead. The icon's for each level though imply riding next to lakes, up mountains but in level that is sadly missing.
The game only has 5 tracks but does have 5 variations of each of them as you go up in difficulty. Each map extends each time from level 1 - 5 lengthening them out as well as putting more obstacles like cars, cows, road barriers and oil patches to artificially lengthen the game. I do appreciate the almost random number generator factor for that though as doing the same race twice you can't predict what will be where. As the courses all look green with straight windy roads it would be almost impossible to memorise them anyway though...
All in all it was fun to go back to this and I still like it. It's a rough first attempt, the levels are kind of bland and it runs poorly but the premise and thrill of weaving between cars beating thugs is still just mindless fun.
+ Still feels pretty unique.
+ Great premise.
+ I like the music.
- Runs terribly.
- Lack of variation in tracks.
Revisiting this in 2023 and this is still a good game that does some pretty stand out things, some of which still aren't replicated today but were especially impressive back in 1991. You take part in illegal street races against 14 other riders per race. Each race you get prize money depending on how you finish which you can pool up to buy newer faster bikes in between races. Road Rash is one of the first games I ever played that I remember allowing me to grind money to get more powerful equipment as you can replay races for more prizes and better positions if you don't do so well initially.
Speed of bikes isn't the only way to win though as road Rash had this kind of biker gang / thug mentality. You can bang into other riders knocking them into cars, punch them, kick them or occasionally steal clubs to smack them off their bike to watch them tumble away in your wingmirrors in an impressive display of tech. They of course can also do this to you too. There is nothing more humiliating then being kicked off your bike by an edgy biker called Rude Boy. One of Road Rash's unique features I did like was that when you do crash or get punched off you can get up and run to your bike to get back on and carry on. Your bike has a hp bar so can only crash so much meaning you do have to be careful. You equally need to be careful when running for your bike as you can get run over amusingly.
It has some other neat little features like police bikes patrolling you need to get away from or knock off. If you crash next to them you are in trouble. I also really like in between the races you get little scenes of the other bikers talking about each other or you in a display of friendship or rivalry like you were chatting before the race. It's a nice touch.
Where the game does fall down though feels a little bit due to the limitation of the tech at the time. Though it is impressive how they used multiple layers to get the scrolling screen, the display of the wingmirrors and scenery but the game unfortunately runs terribly. Anywhere between 8-10 frames per second. I ended up downloading the improved mod which increases the performance to 13-15 frames per second which makes it feel smoother to control without feeling like the spirit of the original is totally lost. Equally there is just a lack of variety in the tracks. 4 out of 5 of them are simply solid green with different shades and trees but feel all too similar except the music. The only stand out track is Palm Desert entirely for being yellow instead. The icon's for each level though imply riding next to lakes, up mountains but in level that is sadly missing.
The game only has 5 tracks but does have 5 variations of each of them as you go up in difficulty. Each map extends each time from level 1 - 5 lengthening them out as well as putting more obstacles like cars, cows, road barriers and oil patches to artificially lengthen the game. I do appreciate the almost random number generator factor for that though as doing the same race twice you can't predict what will be where. As the courses all look green with straight windy roads it would be almost impossible to memorise them anyway though...
All in all it was fun to go back to this and I still like it. It's a rough first attempt, the levels are kind of bland and it runs poorly but the premise and thrill of weaving between cars beating thugs is still just mindless fun.
+ Still feels pretty unique.
+ Great premise.
+ I like the music.
- Runs terribly.
- Lack of variation in tracks.