From: marms@python.cs.unm.edu (Mike Arms)
Subject: Re: Road Rash (Genesis)
Reply-To: sandia!marms@unmvax.unm.edu (Mike Arms)
Organization: Sandia National Laboratories
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 23:09:39 GMT

ejd@cimage.com (Ed Driscoll) writes:
>nstehle@mari.acc-admin.stolaf.edu (Nathan W Stehle) writes:
>  >Okay perhaps this is a REALLY dumb question, but what makes Road Rash so
>  >good?  I've heard many people rave about the game during my travails here
>  >in rec.land, and it has come up in my quest for a new game.  If it's good,
>  >would I be better waiting for RRII??  Thanks for your input!
>
>I hate to be Mr. Negative, but I for one have mixed feelings about 
>Road Rash.  Given that it tends to get a lot of recommendations, I
>thought I'd post my opinion as a sort of "counter-point" position.
> ...
>So what, you may ask, could possibly make me hesitant to recommend
>this gem?  The difficulty of the game, and especially -- the difficulty
>of the controls.  The combination of the two sometimes makes the game so
>frustrating for me that I can only play it for short stretches, then
>it tends to go back on the shelf for awhile.  I did play the game
>long enough to get the best cycle, thinking that the controls of the
>cheap cycles were purposefully hard.  It does get better, but not
>much, and not (for me) good enough.

This is important.  I infer from the above that you made it up to
say the 3rd or 4th circuit at least.  The first two circuits I found
to be very easy, once you get accustomed to the game.  It is harder
to always come in 1st place in each race of a given circuit (you only
have to be in the the top four of each race to advance to the next circuit).
But I have done it with perseverence.

>The difficulty isn't too big a deal.  I do think that some of the
>obstacles (like cars) spring up on you so fast that you really have
>no chance to avoid them.  It's frustrating to get clobbered by something
>that you KNOW you had no chance of avoiding because by the time it
>appears on the screen it's already too late.  

There is some strategy here.  You have to get a feel for which side
of the road to be cruising on.  Cruising on the left is very dangerous
obviously as on-coming cars can appear very quickly.  But you do know
that you can often get by these by running a little off the road to the
far left (emergency situation only as it slows you down a lot and has 
its own hazards).  Also taking the left side into an intersection gives
you more time to react to traffic conditions.

>The controls, on the other hand, ARE a big deal.  The worst problem
>is that I just can't seem to keep the bike on the road at any decent
>speed.  I'm CONSTANTLY wiping out on almost every curve, unless I go
>so slow that I can't win the race.  This frustrates me to no end.  The
>people who recommend this game must be much better than I am at
>controlling the bike.  If the problem is that I'm driving too fast,
>then the illusion of speed is very poor -- it doesn't FEEL like I'm
>going that fast.  The scenery isn't racing by at an alarming pace 
>like it does in, for instance, F-Zero or Top Gear.  I think I'm cruising 
>at a pretty comfortable pace and then WHAM! -- off the curve I go.
>I've tried to get better at braking before I enter a turn, but
>there are so many turns that I can't seem to do it and still keep
>a reasonable overall speed.

One suggestion here.  I started playing Road Rash using my Arcade 
Powerstick (a joystick).  I made it a fair ways into the game but found 
it pretty difficult to control (i.e. stay on the road).  But then I
changed to the regular control pad.  My success rate zoomed.  It was
much easier to control with the direction pad.  This is due to the
need to make incremental direction changes (pulses) rather than 
continuous turns.  Continuous turns always got me into trouble.

You might be right concerning the illusion of speed.  But there are 
a lot of times in Road Rash that I find it to be very fast.  F-Zero 
does often feel faster, but it is simulating a much higher speed vehicle
(supposedly). One thing to contrast in RR and F0, you are racing on a
fixed course in F0; the race in RR is semi-random.  This makes it harder
for you to anticipate what to do or be prepared for.  A lot of people
applaude RR for this randomness feature.  I like it (even when cursing
my luck sometimes).  

>The "fighting" controls are also difficult to use, in my opinion.
>You basically have to hit one of the other buttons (can't remember
>which one -- I think it's configurable anyway) and for some of
>the moves (like a kick) you have to push up or down on your joypad.
>However, at the same time you're doing this, you have to keep holding
>your accelerator button down AND steer your bike with the joypad.
>The net result is that it's quite difficult to attack somebody
>without losing control of your bike.  Most of the time I just
>resort to passing them instead, and only take the time to beat
>up on someone early in the race or if I'm far enough ahead to lose
>a little time.

I, too, have trouble driving at high speed and fighting.  Actually I 
believe that you slow down somewhat whenever you punch or kick, so
that can work to your detriment.  But then again, I mastered the
several more buttons needed in F-Zero and Super Mario Kart.  The two
or three buttons in Road Rash seem a lot simpler now. :-)

-- 
Mike Arms
Editor of Encounter magazine
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