What is it about Road Fighter, then, that inspired me to write? I shall tell you: it's the speed that affects your gameplay, easily putting you into the much talked-of Zone. So, it's not exactly the most interesting concept of all time, nor is it a very original variation on a genre that had been at that point been around for quite a few years. Throughout the game, you will be able to pick up some fuel containers along the road, but good driving will grant you some more, better bonus fuel items. If you blow up, you will lose some 5-6 fuel units, and acceleration is not all that quick as it first appears to be, particularly when you are running out of fuel. I think Jeremy Clarkson put it best: it's not the speed that kills you - it's suddenly becoming stationary. Exceptions to this rule are trucks and road blocks into which you will crash no matter what, and oil puddles will make you spin uncontrollably, so you do need to be very careful.
-super-nintendo.png "road fighter for pc")
This was the one innovative thing in the game, a fairly big step forward in racing games in 1984. You have the usual enemy vehicles in your way that you must dodge, although instead of straight-on crashing into other vehicles, running into another vehicle will make you bump and slide off left or right randomly, but you can straighten yourself back by counter-steering. In all its three forms, Road Fighter is a very simple car racing game with no bigger plot than trying to get through the given stages before your fuel runs out.
When I finally got to play the true Road Fighter, the arcade version, it was yet another different overall experience, and I thought, why would Konami release three different games with the same name? I got to play the MSX version a lot later, through emulation, although I have managed to acquire the original cartridge a couple of weeks ago, but initially, I was dumbstruck by how different it looked and felt like to play - it was like a different game.
Anyhoo, how I got into playing Road Fighter on the NES was through a relative of mine, who had somehow gotten this strange cartridge with around 50 games on it, and most of them could even be considered classics - if not for the rest of the world, then at least for the Japanese gamers. So naturally, even the MSX was more popular for a good period of time in Finland than the NES, because you could get a cassette drive for the MSX and write your own programs. Of course, what made the cassette- and disk-driven computers so much more attractive to most of us in that age was the ability to copy games with very little effort. failed to really hit my nerves in the way that would have made the machine any more interesting to me than the handheld Game & Watch consoles. All I know is, this is one of the games that introduced me into NES gaming, and I'm forever grateful for it, because Super Mario Bros. It's not as though it would have been completely impossible to convert, is it?Īs I have no real idea of the game's current status in the retro gaming world, other than having two stars out of five at Generation-MSX from 196 votes, I can not say whether this particular game can be considered a classic or anything of the sort.
It is rather interesting, though, that Road Fighter never got released on any of our regularly featured contestants, because it very well could have been a good subject for conversion for the C64, the 48k Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC, not to mention Atari 800 XE/XL. This will work as another mid-term quickie of sorts, as well as an introduction into the gaming world outside of C64 and Spectrum, infinitely better known to the people outside of Europe, but relatively unknown to us who grew up with keyboard-based computers. Now, though, I know quite well how long it will take me to write about certain types of games, and currently, I just really need some time off from the bigger projects and do some easier ones that I originally set out to do more than those gigantic comparisons.
ROAD FIGHTER FOR PC SOFTWARE
The European NES release published by Palcom Software in 1991.Īs one of the games I had decided to write about before I actually registered to Blogger and started doing these comparisons, it has taken an inordinate amount of time to actually get into writing about Road Fighter. Developed and published by Konami in Japan as an arcade machine in 1984.Ĭonverted and published by Konami for the MSX in 1984 and for the Nintendo Famicom in 1985.
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