So one of my goals was to make Hang-On obsolete and I think we did that.” The feature was apparently a challenging one to incorporate, however: “Technically, I don’t think it had been done before, that type of road effect… essentially, it gave me a way to do a 3D road… It was really technically challenging.” As Dan Geisler, one of the lead programmers of Road Rash, stated in 2013: “I really wanted to have a driving game with hills and jumps. The inclusion of undulating roads that rise and fall as well as twist and turn was something that the developers were determined to include, as this would make the courses and the racing in general more fun and challenging than the traditional flat-surface racing games whose tracks only moved left and right, never rising or falling. These can all lead to some spectacular crashes – hitting an obstacle at speed on the apex of a hill can separate you from your bike and send you hurtling through the air for some distance, leading to a long run back to your fallen vehicle. If they manage to do so then you’re “busted” and your race is over.Īlongside those who want to see your face smeared across half a mile of tarmac are various stationary threats, as due to the street-racing nature of the game, the courses are filled with roadside obstacles such as trees, signposts and (apparently invincible) cows as well as on-track obstacles such as gravel patches that cause you to skid. In your face, road safety!Ĭivilian traffic and your opponents aren’t the only mobile threats you have to contend with either, as for some reason, local law enforcement takes a dim view of these competitions and so police officers on motorbikes occasionally appear and attempt to bring your race to an abrupt end. Along with the outright punching and bludgeoning of opponents, further satisfaction can be gained from dirty tactics such as kicking a rival into the path of an oncoming car and watching them sail through the air in your rear-view mirror. Each rider has a health bar that decreases upon receiving damage and if you lose all of your health then you fall off your bike, which costs you time as you pick yourself up and get back into the race. The introduction of hand-to-hand combat was a groundbreaking revelation that makes the game’s street-racing even more thrilling and dangerous as you and your fellow racers fight with fist and foot – as well as a truncheon, if you’re able to steal one from another rider – at high speed. These races see you and your fourteen fellow “rashers” competing on the various stretches of highway that make up the game’s levels, the goal being, unsurprisingly, to cross the finish line ahead of your rivals.īut while players had previously experienced motorcycle racing in games such as Hang-On, and learned to swerve amongst traffic in driving games such as Out Run, Road Rash brought its own unique feature to the table, one that was a huge contributing factor in its success in carving out its own identity: combining racing with combat. Road Rash casts you as a rider participating in illegal motorcycle racing competitions across the highways of California.
#Road rash 3 tour de force series#
The game would later receive ports to numerous other systems and would also turn out to be just the first title in a series that continued throughout the 1990s. One such EA title I owned and became a huge fan of was motorcycle racing / combat game Road Rash, which debuted on the Mega Drive in 1991. (Also, it was easy to recognise EA Mega Drive games by the oversized boxes and oversized, yellow-chipped cartridges). Colossus!”), to me they were a company synonymous with interesting and fantastic games due to the titles developed and / or published by EA that I owned for my Sega Mega Drive: The Immortal, Populous, John Madden American Football, Desert Strike, etc. When I was a kid, years before Electronic Arts became the obscenely greedy, morally bankrupt parody of cartoonish supervillainy that they are today (“Bah! He was a rank amateur compared to… Dr.