Gaming Greats – Road Rash (1991)
You never see Valentino Rossi taking out any of his MotoGP opponents with a baseball bat, do you? He obviously didn't spend enough time playing Road R
You never see Valentino Rossi taking out any of his MotoGP opponents with a baseball bat, do you? He obviously didn’t spend enough time playing Road Rash. Or he, you know, plays by the rules or something.Actually, Road Rash was more like the Manx TT than a track race, with events taking place on the road. Er, except there were civilian cars to dodge.Okay, let’s start this again. Back in the days of the Sega Mega Drive, in roared a game all donned in fancy leathers and a custom crash helmet. It looked like a fairly traditional racer in the vein of Super Hang-On.What it turned out to be was, for want of a better term, a bike-’em-up.Taking part in illegal road races across America, you didn’t just have to contend with oncoming traffic and traffic cops; you had to watch you didn’t get a bat wrapped round your head or a cattle prod in the back.Of course, the flipside was that you could also lash out at your biker chums, and even grab their weaponry off them. Who cares about straight-line speed when you can swipe someone off on their way to the finishing line?You could say Road Rash was a bit of a one-trick pony, but there was some depth. Winning races meant earning money to buy new bikes and the five courses got longer and faster as you moved through the ranks.It was enough fun to ensure a sequel in 1992, cunningly titled Road Rash II, which added two-player split-screen modes. Road Rash III: Tour De Force arrived in 1995, with tracks from around the world, and was the last version for the Mega Drive.
OTHER GAMING GREATS
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
