Road Rash Retrospective Pt. I

In this episode of Passagem Secreta's Videocast, we remember all the games of the racing series from Electronic Arts.

Games reviewed in this part:

Road Rash (1991, Mega Drive)
Road Rash II (1992, Mega Drive)
Skitchin' (1994, Mega Drive)
Road Rash (1995, 3DO/Playstation/Saturn/PC)
Road Rash (1995, SegaCD)

To check out part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLlU6xKHxhw

>>Rafael Fernandes: Motorcycles, violence, subversion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

kick and run over your opponents,

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

and the police who're behind you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this money can be lost in two ways:

one is falling near a police officer during the race,

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

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

forcing you to pay a mechanic to fix it.

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

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

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

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

as if they had a unique artificial intelligence.

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

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

Road Rash also innovated with its graphics engine:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oops, my bad.

>>Shigeru Miyamoto: Toasty!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes the controls are a little too loose,

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

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

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

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

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

thanks to its fun and very refined gameplay,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that happened in the following year with Road Rash II,

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

Furthermore, the gameplay was refined,

bringing tighter controls and game physics more fun than ever.

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

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

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

which varies according to your performance in the race.

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

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

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

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

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

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

and represent no big deal compared to the original.

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

like a new gaming experience.

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

and release several sequels as they always did, right?

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

SKITCHIN'!

Skitchin' is not an official game in the series,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is also worth mentioning the sound,

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

creating a pretty cool result.

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

but with some improvements and a more expansive setting.

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

since the player has to pay attention to passing cars,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sega Saturn and also for Windows 95,

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

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

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

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

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

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

but while at the time it seemed something really cool,

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

Yet, it is very playable, although apparently

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

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

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

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

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

The soundtrack is full of licensed music, that is,

compositions from real bands, as Soundgarden,

Hammerbox, and other artists of A&M Records.

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

however, a major problem comes up:

licensed songs only play during the menus, that is,

what play during the game are just MIDI style songs,

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

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

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

which would be a problem if, in addition,

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

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

But, anyway.

Anyhow,

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

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

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

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

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

♪ So do it right

♪ Do it right

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

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

This time, the races run throughout the planet,

having also included Brazil as one of the tracks,

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

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

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

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

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

Cool, eh?

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

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

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

as excessive granulation and fully sparse and strange colors,

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

consider the graphics of this game worse than previous versions!

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

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

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

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

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

which at that time was already an abandoned console.

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

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

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

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

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

that would allow better scale effects.

But the differential is really in the licensed soundtrack,

that this time plays during the race,

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

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

♪ I got off being sold out

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

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

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

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

while not adding much in relation to these previous games.

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

♪ And some would say about it

CLICK TO WATCH PART 2