brother j says yuck

All-Time Favorite Things: Road Rash

Following Street Fighter, my second favorite game series might be Road Rash — culminating with Road Rash 3DO lol. For those who never heard of this game (or of a 3DO — not worth remembering really), the point is this — it’s a high-speed racing game, with fighting. 

As you race through (super awesomely detailed) cities on motorcycles, you can punch or kick other racers off their bikes, into walls or oncoming traffic. There were also cops on motorcycles who would chase you down and beat you with their billy clubs. Fortunately could fight with cops too, sometimes stealing their billy club. Naturally if you stole a weapon from a cop or any your fellow racers, you could proceed to use it to beat them with their own shit. Smacking people with the chain was always fun, and effective.

Of course, while you’re trying to avoid and overtake the other racers, you also have to watch out for other obstacles — like pedestrians and oncoming traffic. The former are obviously fun to run over, even though it slows you down. Running into the latter would launch your body head first into a painful tumble that never ceased to be funny. Then your character would automatically run back to your bike (sometimes getting hit by more traffic or other riders) and the race would be back on.

Road Rash was the kind of concept where you’re surprised nobody else thought of it beforehand. I’m also kind of surprised it never made a comeback on a next gen machine, especially since I’m pretty sure it was an EA game — but maybe it did and I just never knew, possibly because they sucked and didn’t recapture the magic of the old school versions.