"Road Fighter" - NES/Famicom

Yet another arcade port-- but wait! This one's a Konami game! It's been a hot several minutes since we last saw one of these!

Road Fighter hit the arcades in December of 1984, and it showed up here on the Famicom in July, 1985. Not a huge amount of time in-between the two, and that seems to be a running theme. I had an impression when I was younger that most NES arcade ports were ports of games that were basically ancient, but clearly they were far more contemporary to the original releases than I actually thought.

Which begs the question of what the business strategy is to releasing an arcade game for home play. I'm guessing it was simply that the arcade game was widespread long enough to get people hooked on the game, and then once the company's arcade machine sales slowed down, they could get a last round of profits out of releasing a home version. It seems like that would kind of kick the arcade owners in the back-pocket while making a little more money for the publisher.

Of course, I wasn't there, so my interpretation may be totally incorrect, but I'm just guessing.

The only nuggets of knowledge that the Japanese Wikipedia gives us about the game is that the game was originally called Red Car (catchy), and that it was developed specifically by Konami Development Division 2. Cool. I wonder if they'll show up again. Probably!

Let's play the game.

Put up your dukes, roads.

----- Playthrough -----

Road Fighter comes equipped with a Level 1 and a Level 2, so let's try Level 1 and see what makes it so one-y.

The point of Road Fighter isn't so much to fight on the road, or to fight the road, but to fight everyone else on the road for dominance. So that's exactly what we'll do.

Put up your dukes, other drivers.

Basically what's going on here is that you have a limited amount of fuel: 100 (...percent I guess). Pretty much no matter what you're doing in this game, the fuel is going down, and if it hits 0, you run out of gas and after drifting a few feet you lose instantly. Your method for refueling is the colorful car icons on the road, which give you some fuel back when touched. There's only one life, so the game is to make it as far as you can without running out of fuel in the middle of a level.

Making this miserable for you will be everyone else on the road. See, Road Fighter doesn't take place on a well-organized race track-- as you might have guessed, it takes place on common roads. Which means you'll have to contend with slow pedestrians and 18-wheelers casually driving as you whisk past them at 400 km/h (that's 249 mph by the way, which honestly is so fast I couldn't even envision it without a video).

Which means these trucks are doing like 200 mph at least.

Cars come in three basic flavors:

- The yellow car, which drives forwards constantly, and maybe doesn't have a steering wheel at all because it just goes perfectly straight.
- The blue car, which changes lanes away from you when it sees you coming. Wuss.
- The red car, which changes lanes towards you when it sees you coming. These guys are ready to die and take you with them.

The other obstacles are just a barrier in the middle of the road, which will instantly obliterate you, and an oil slick.

Because I was going to see that coming at 250 mph.

Whenever you bump another car or an oil slick, your car will go into fishtailing mode, and the way to get out is to steer your car straight again. If it's turned to the right, steer to the left, for example. However, this is pretty tough to do correctly every-time and I found it more effective to just wiggle the d-pad in both directions regardless of case.

The first two maps in the game, pictured above, are a grassy highway and a very long bridge. The third level is a beach-side narrow highway (red cars are your biggest threat on this level, and it's probably the hardest level out of the four).

The boardwalk seems more dangerous than I remember.

And the fourth level is like, a desert I guess?

With a root-beer rock-candy cliffside nearby.

Beat all four levels, and you get a message saying "GOAL," and the game starts over again, but a little harder. That's all she wrote.

Selecting Level 2 from the main menu is basically the same, except the ratio of lane-changing cars to yellow cars seems much higher. It is more difficult, for sure, but it doesn't really add anything new to the game.

----- Review -----

How long did I play?

10 minutes.

How much did I beat?
I beat one loop of the game.

Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

Not running into other cars and moving your car forwards seems intuitive enough to me. One good note for this game in this category would be the A+B buttons. The B button accelerates in a lower gear, while the A button is a higher gear. I didn't realize this at first, but the sound the car makes in the game clues you into this being the case (as well as the top speeds). You get a higher-pitched whining sound when using the lower gear button, especially when it tops out. All of that is a good visual/aural way of teaching the player what the controls do without explaining them.

Gameplay / Difficulty: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

The game's not unreasonably tough, and traveling at the high-speed while dodging things successfully makes you feel pretty cool. I think in general if you like the concept of a racing game, this one could work for you even though you're not really racing anything but your fuel tank.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

Four levels isn't an insane amount of content, and to be honest they're just location changes rather than changes to the mechanics or introductions of anything new. I guess the beachside level does make things a bit more interesting with such a narrow road. In general though, I'd have to say in both length and depth, the game is relatively shallow.

Sound / Graphics: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The sounds of the vehicles and driving are fine in the game. There really isn't any music, just the sound of your car, so it would be nice to have a little tune or something to listen to at least, but the car sounds are good for the NES.

The graphics are simple but fine. One good note is how they make the refuel icon stand out by making it multicolored and with a white outline. It's very eye-catching despite being car shaped, which otherwise might have been confusing.

This is either a collectible or the drugs are kicking in.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

I think I'd be hard pressed to say that it really does. The whole aesthetic of the game is pretty generic as a racing game. It's fine, I enjoy playing it, but it lacks something that makes it unique to me.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

I won't say that you're missing anything revolutionary by not playing it, but I do think it's fun, and you'll have fun for a little while if you play it. So in that sense, it's worth it.

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