A motorcycle racing game where you could punch, kick and attack your fellow riders with baseball bats and nunchucks? Where shunting an opponent into oncoming traffic was actively encouraged? Add a splash of Cannonball Run-inspired illegality and you have what co-lead designer Randy Breen called “more of an entertaining game than a pure driving simulation.”
It’s strange to think of a time when Electronic Arts made solid games with minimum evil, but the arrival of Road Rash in September 1991 on the Sega Mega Drive created a fresh fusion of styles within the always-crowded driving genre.
If you want to put Viper in his place next time out, then let me take you on a journey back to the flannel-tinted era of 1991… 13th place is my reward for surviving almost ten miles of undulating highways.Īnd if that vignette doesn’t make you want to immediately jump on your bike and try again, then you’ll never understand the unique appeal of Road Rash. Crack! My stamina is already on fumes, chipped away by that persistent highway patrolman a few miles back and that moment with the sudden hill and the family sedan I ploughed into.Īs I cartwheel one direction and my bike in another, close enough to the finish to see the two-frame animations of the waiting crowds, I have enough time to see Viper streak over the line before another dozen bikers scream past. I don’t see the swinging baseball bat until it connects with my visor. If I time this just right, I can force him out and into its path, and then I’m the one surrounded by swooning leather-jacketed babes while he eats a not inconsiderable amount of asphalt. There’s a slow-moving car in the outside lane. First place, $3,750 prize money and finally enough in the bank to buy that Diablo 1000 I’d been lusting after since day one.
Just 0.2 miles to go until the Peninsula finish line.