Road Blasters (Genesis)

[VideoGameCritic]

Not sure what to make of this. Got really far on my first go, and scored 83K before I really knew what i was doing.

I love arcade games of this kind, but the steering is really touchy to weave through traffic. Fortunately you can blast most oncoming cars with your machine guns, which tend to pop like balloons.

During one stage I noticed the scenery on the side of the row was blue. Oh cool I'm on a bridge! That's fun. Then I saw trees sticking out of the blue...

[BlasteroidAli]

I loved it in the arcades. Back in the day the feeling of power and speed were awesome. It was basically Spy hunter 3d. Blast through a stage and you would get it saying... now that is what I call cruising. I will be interested to hear your thoughts on a version on the genesis.
I have the ps1 version via the midway games collection. It was great. Think and Xs child stole it off of me. Oh well.

I played the Lynx version on Emulation. Hmmm. Uncontrollable. Graphics a couple of notches down from the arcade.

[lynchie137]

I used to play the NES port quite a bit back in the day. I haven't sat down and played it in ages, but to the best of my recollection I thought that it was a pretty decent little game. So I'm curious to see how the Genesis port measures up in comparison, since it's on a more advanced and powerful console than the good ol' NES

[Atariboy]

The Genesis version is an amazing conversion, lynchie137. Other than the missing voice samples and some color palette differences due to the Genesis hardware having less colors than the arcade hardware, it's virtually arcade perfect.

Short of owning the original cabinet or doing the work to get MAME setup to work with a PC steering wheel, the Genesis port is the definitive way of playing Roadblasters at home. Steering has been tuned to work with the d-pad where as emulated arcade versions on compilations can be a bit twitchy (Especially those that don't properly utilize the analog stick with steering either full left or full right with nothing in-between, like I believe Midway Arcade Treasures 1 worked).

[VideoGameCritic]

Did you guys know they made a series of Matchbox cars based on this game?

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R ... &_osacat=0

[lynchie137]

Did you guys know they made a series of Matchbox cars based on this game?

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R ... &_osacat=0

I had a few Matchbox toy cars as well as a ton of Hot Wheels (among others) as a lad in the 80's. But I honestly can say I have no recollection of these whatsoever. Maybe they were on the shelves at the K-Mart, Woolco, Zellers and Woolworth's stores my folks used to shop at back in the day and I just didn't notice them. That could be very much possible, since there were so many different toy lines on the go at the time and it is really hard to keep track of what was actually released, where it was released, and when. A shame, really, since going by the pics on Ebay, they do look to be of good build quality, ready to take whatever rough and tumble play any kid would throw at them. I think if I had these, i would have really enjoyed them.

As a side note, when we were kids growing up in Newfoundland, me, my friends and my cousins would often refer to these little die cast toy cars as "Dinkies". Why I have no idea, to be honest. Which leads me to ask if any of you guys growing up used this term to describe them?? And if not, what did you used to call them?

[VideoGameCritic]

Just played the Atari Lynx version of this game, and I'm impressed as hell! It's got the arcade look of the Genesis, but is a lot more challenging. It even has some voice synth! Reviews forthcoming!