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>>Rafael Fernandes: Motorcycles, violence, subversion.

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The Road Rash series became a huge success in all the consoles which it passed through

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until it was abandoned by EA, which never released a new game since 2003.

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For this reason, come to remember the characters, races and especially the beatings in the classic Road Rash series.

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The first game of the series was released on '91 for the Mega Drive, with a very innovative premise.

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The player is put in control of a bike, running clandestinely on the roads of California.

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And for clandestine you can understand it as a real illegal race on the streets, with the option to punch,

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kick and run over your opponents,

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and at the same time you have to fight for space with the other cars on the track,

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and the police who're behind you.

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This concept puts the game ahead of the other racing games of the time,

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because in this manner each race is a completely different thing,

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with cars appearing in other stretches, enemies knocking you down,

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other obstacles, anyway, if you let it, the game will never let you tired due to the complete chaos of some stages.

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For every completed race, the player accumulates a certain amount of money that allows buying a faster bike,

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that will serve to compete at the following levels, which have larger tracks and, of course, even more obstacles.

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And this money can be lost in two ways:

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one is falling near a police officer during the race,

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so the player is required to pay the bail to get out of prison;

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or breaking the bike by crashing it out there on the stage,

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forcing you to pay a mechanic to fix it.

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The game over really occurs when the player has no money to pay any of these two,

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forcing you to start all over again from the first stage;

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which is not a big problem for those who noted the password properly, right.

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Another nice detail of Road Rash is that each of the opponents have a name and an individual personality,

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as if they had a unique artificial intelligence.

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Before each race, a message showing a provocation or hint from one of such rivals appears on the screen,

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which is something pretty cool because somehow it creates a story, certain personality to the game.

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Road Rash also innovated with its graphics engine:

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while several racing games for the Mega Drive released until then only had a largely flat surface track,

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the EA game brought hills, bumps, and various other types of slope,

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throwing away the player according to the physical limitations at the time, of course.

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All this having a very reasonable frame rate, although sometimes not very efficient.

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This helped Road Rash to be acclaimed with these innovations in relation to the scale perspective through software;

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remembering that the Super Nintendo and the Mode 7 only would come a little later in '91,

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where the scale effects through hardware made possible that the cars could slid as soap at 60 frames per second.

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Oops, my bad.

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>>Shigeru Miyamoto: Toasty!

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>>Rafael Fernandes: The game's songs were produced by Rob Hubbard, considered the Commodore 64 wizard.

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The rock-based arrangements are very well made and make good use of the FM sound chip of the Mega Drive,

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and is easy to get out there murmuring the themes for anyone who has played for a long time.

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The sound effects of crashes and voices are reasonable, and there is nothing special about this.

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I believe it was quite common for the players to put the sound on mute

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and listen to more interesting music, which is up to each person, right?

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However, despite all these qualities, the game has its flaws.

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Sometimes the controls are a little too loose,

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and in the final levels is almost impossible to control the bike.

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The menu interface is also a bit complicated, quite inexplicably.

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The only way to access the bike shop is pressing C on this screen there,

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which makes it very difficult for those without the game's manual to find out, right?

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But, in short, the Road Rash series debuted as something unique and incredibly fun,

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thanks to its fun and very refined gameplay,

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making the game excel in relation to all others similar in the market at the time.

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The success of the game has made Electronic Arts produce ports for the Amiga, which is excellent, by the way,

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and the 8-bit consoles like Master System, Game Gear and Game Boy, which are reasonable.

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For the Game Boy, there is the original port launched in 1996,

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and then an enhanced version compatible only with the Game Boy Color,

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released in 2000, which featured graphics and scale effects much better than before.

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With the receptivity of the game, it is clear that Electronic Arts could not miss the opportunity to launch a sequel,

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that happened in the following year with Road Rash II,

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which slightly improves the graphics over the previous game, and brings a little more navigable menu.

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Furthermore, the gameplay was refined,

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bringing tighter controls and game physics more fun than ever.

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This time, the clandestine tournament goes through the roads of the United States, and is not limited to California anymore.

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In total, there are 25 tracks representing Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, Tennessee and the state of Arizona.

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Another nice detail is that, at the end of each race, there is a funny small animation,

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which varies according to your performance in the race.

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The game also has a two player mode in split screen with two options:

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or they play cooperatively, where the two can compete in the tournament,

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or one on one, with the two on a single track only.

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Road Rash can even be considered an addition to the first game than a true sequel,

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since, apart from the improvement in controls, a greater balance in difficulty,

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and a mode for two players, the other new features are more cosmetic,

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and represent no big deal compared to the original.

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Still, the game is as or more fun than the first,

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like a new gaming experience.

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The guaranteed success of the franchise could bring many opportunities for Electronic Arts to screw some money from the players

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and release several sequels as they always did, right?

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But in 1994, the company surprised with the release of…

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SKITCHIN'!

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Skitchin' is not an official game in the series,

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but it is clear that uses the same graphics engine of Road Rash II – with the same rate of frames per second.

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The premise is also almost the same, but far more creative:

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this time the race is between skates, and the player must always be alert to passing vehicles on the street.

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Thus, he can take a ride in these cars and proceed the race in this way,

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and can stay there until he reaches the end, or pick up momentum to go ahead behind another car.

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Another nice detail is that you can get up ramps and do some tricks,

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and also has some bonus stages, in order to break the ice between the tracks.

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Is also worth mentioning the sound,

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whose music has real guitar sounds played by a special driver that puts the Mega Drive sound chip on the limit,

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creating a pretty cool result.

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And the graphics, as I said, are practically the same thing as those of Road Rash,

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but with some improvements and a more expansive setting.

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Also comparing with the bike game, Skitchin' is a much more difficult game,

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since the player has to pay attention to passing cars,

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the other runners on the track, and the ramps and obstacles that appear in the scene.

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But it's still a great, let's say, spin-off of the original racing series,

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bringing a good alternative of fun without escaping from the original formula.

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In 1994, the 3DO was in the market as one of the first 32-bit consoles,

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thus Electronic Arts decided to upgrade the franchise to the new hardware from Panasonic.

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First released for this console and then ported to the Playstation,

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Sega Saturn and also for Windows 95,

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Road Rash benefited greatly from the increased storage capacity of the CD to put several FMVs with real actors,

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which can be good or bad, depending on your point of view.

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These little videos have the same function of those animations in the Mega version, and,

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as well as there, it's likely that after a certain time it'll get a little boring to watch them all the time.

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The game mixes digitized sprites with a 3D scenario plan,

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which ensures 60 frames per second during almost all the time,

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but while at the time it seemed something really cool,

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this graphic style has aged badly, as we can see from the video.

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Yet, it is very playable, although apparently

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this union affected the physics of the game to some extent, since they are not very efficient,

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as you can see in this frontal crash with a car where nothing happens,

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and other a bit imbecile falls as, for example, with a mailbox.

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Another innovation of Road Rash is in relation to the sound,

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inaugurating a trend in the gaming industry that continues until today.

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The soundtrack is full of licensed music, that is,

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compositions from real bands, as Soundgarden,

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Hammerbox, and other artists of A&M Records.

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The game even contained video clips of some of these songs,

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however, a major problem comes up:

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licensed songs only play during the menus, that is,

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what play during the game are just MIDI style songs,

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which are not as good as the music from the Mega Drive, for example.

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This probably occurred due to a technical limitation of the time,

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since the scenarios were loaded directly from the CD and constructed during the race,

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which would be a problem if, in addition,

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the console also had to read the sound tracks of the media,

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further with the super slow CD reader that most video games had at the time.

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But, anyway.

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Anyhow,

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the 32-bit Road Rash serves as a sort of series reboot for the latest consoles,

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and it is really fun, mainly due to these innovations.

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Unfortunately, the game does not excite as much as the versions of the Mega Drive,

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but it is a good alternative for those who did not have the video game console from Sega.

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>>Chris Cornell: …mother says that's the only life

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♪ So do it right

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♪ Do it right

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>>Rafael Fernandes: Still, the Mega Drive was not forgotten,

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with the launch of Road Rash 3: Tour De Force in 1995.

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This time, the races run throughout the planet,

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having also included Brazil as one of the tracks,

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with a very interesting scenery and a song mixing rock with carnival percussion.

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Moreover, the soundtrack of the game, composed by Don Veca,

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does not have such a remarkable instrumentation as the previous games,

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but does a great job in mixing supposed sounds of the country where the race takes place with rock and metal arrangements.

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Check out this version of the Tarantella, which plays in the stage of Italy.

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Cool, eh?

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The big problem of Road Rash 3 is in the graphics.

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Digitized sprites from the 32-bit Road Rash were recycled, and as we know well,

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the use of this graphic style on the Mega Drive can bring some consequences, which are very present in this game,

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as excessive granulation and fully sparse and strange colors,

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which repeled a lot of people from the game and made the critics of the time

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consider the graphics of this game worse than previous versions!

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But, as the focus of Road Rash never was the graphics,

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the third game in the series proves to be a lot of fun, with more exaggerated physics,

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a more insistent police, which also has a helicopter to take down the bikers,

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and more speed than the previous ones, which can sometimes be something uncontrollable, as in the first game of the series.

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The surprise is up to this release for the Sega CD, in 1995 too,

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which at that time was already an abandoned console.

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Road Rash CD is like a hybrid game, that is,

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it takes the very best in all previous incarnations of the series and try to mix everything up,

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including the little videos (at a much lower quality, of course), the menus and,

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as you can see, the graphics from the Mega Drive ports,

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which is quite disappointing considering the power of the Sega CD video processor,

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that would allow better scale effects.

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But the differential is really in the licensed soundtrack,

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that this time plays during the race,

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although the sound quality of the songs is not a big deal.

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>>Chris Cornell: ♪ I got up feeling so down

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♪ I got off being sold out

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>>Rafael Fernandes: Although it doesn't take much advantage from the add-on

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in addition to the more than 500 MB of multimedia content that the game's cover itself discloses,

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Road Rash CD is another option for those who're tired of playing the first three games for the Mega Drive,

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offering new tracks and a good soundtrack that plays during the menus,

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while not adding much in relation to these previous games.

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>>Carrie Akre: …now
♪ We've only got this moment

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♪ And some would say about it

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CLICK TO WATCH PART 2