“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

In Electronic Arts’ Genesis classic, Road Rash, you take on the roll of a street biker who has to punch, club, and speed his/her way to victory.

You aren’t racing on a giant circle completing laps - you are competing in illegal street races for stacks of cash.

Road Rash takes advantage of the 3rd person, behind the bike perspective that was popular on the Genesis and uses it very well. Keeping all the HUD elements on the lower part of the screen clears up a lot of space for you to be able to watch out for oncoming traffic, police, road hazards, and other bikers trying to punch you in the face. I’m sure only using the upper part of the screen also contributed to how smooth the 2D scrolling is pulled off.

All five of the tracks in Road Rash are based off of actual California Highways. You can access all five of them right from the start, and after getting fourth place or better in each of them, you progress to the next set of races. As you progress through the sets of tracks, you race farther on the various highways, with faster opponents, more hazards on the road, and bigger stakes.

The only way to completely lose the game is to run out of money. This happens if you are busted by the cops (crashing too close to a police bike) and are unable to pay bale, or you completely wreck your bike and don’t have enough money to repair it.

Why did I pick this game?

Road Rash is one of my wife’s favorite games. She and her siblings used to play it all the time. When we saw that our local game store, Gamer Time (shout-out!), had a copy during one of their big sales, we ended up picking up a Genesis, Road Rash, and several other games for around $35.

Since Brittany loves the game so much, I’ve been wanting to give it a try.

How does it hold up with time?

Having never played it as a kid, there is no nostalgia factor here for me. My initial impressions were good. The game looks good, the soundtrack is fun (though a little funky on the Genesis sound chip), and being able to punch the other bikers in their stupid faces as you pass them has a certain charm to it. The bikes handle well and you get a sense of progression from buying the faster machines with your winnings.

I was getting frustrated with the increasing length of the tracks at first. As far as I could tell, there was no way to tell how far along you were in a track. Then Brittany pointed out that you had a mile counter in your HUD. It requires you to pay attention to how long a race is before starting it, since once you are in, there is no other indicator on how far along you are.

Once I realized that, my frustrations with the game seemed to slowly evaporate. There is not as much variety within the tracks as I would like, but for a 16-bit era racer with a little bit of a twist, it is still a pretty fun game.

Tags: EA, Friday Old Games, Genesis, racing, Road Rash, Sega Genesis

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 11:07 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.