The Ultimate Bike Game

User Rating: 9.4 | Road Rash II GEN
This had to be one of the best games for the Genesis/Mega-drive(uk).

Road Rash 2 took all the great ideas from the first installment and then allowed you to have two player head to head games.

RR2 has you starting out on a rat-bike to illegally race other ‘rashers’. This game has awesome feel and involvement. You are set against you hardened competitors to win races and earn some cash for a better bike. As you may realise this is not a racing simulator but in fact a well constructed arcade racing game with added bonus of a beat-em-up feature. That’s right, you don’t just race to the finish line but you’ve also got to beat up the other riders, with your fists or club or best of all chain. If you fail to brawl with your competitors you are likely to end up as road kill.

Not only do you have to watch out for the other racers but there is also the law to look out for too. I’m sure this is the first game that did this – but maybe not. The coppers are on sturdy fast bikes and they are also armed with a club. Don’t get beaten by the cop or else you will fall off and most likely get busted. Whilst brawling with anyone, you can infact pinch the weapon off them – cool.

However falling off your bikes doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road for you, as you can get back up, run to your bike and get back on to race – although you’ve lost precious time to the leader. Having said this, the game does have a slight catchup mode on it.

You progress your way through the game and race in 5 different counties/states which behold different terrain. There are the sandy (slightly slippery) roads of texas to the rolling hills of New England; not to mention the very twisty icy roads of Alaska. To a UK resident, I so badly wanted to visit the USA.

Along the game, if you pick on someone for a fight, they will often remember you and pick you out for a fight in the next race - nice touch!

The bikes get faster and have better handling, then with added Nitros. This is one of the first games I noticed where different bikes had different features – so some would be heavy and hard to turn, whilst another might be light and nimble yet lack top speed. Choose carefully – again a great idea in this 1990’s game.

Onto the finer issues of GAMEPLAY. Controls were simple and effective, not too arcade. As said there are different road conditions and different handling bikes. In its day it was very effective. The game was also realistic, in that taking the risk of jumping over the brow of a hill on the wrong side of the road, often met you hitting a car head on. (small note: great fun was had when I realised you could bounce off the roof of cars – slightly far fetched).

The game seemed to have excellent AI for the coppers and other bikes. The moron car drivers were just that.

GRAPHICS – although seem blocky now, were great in their day and also made good use of vivid bright colours, thus making it easy to make out where you’re going.

SOUND – I don’t remember much, just that the bikes had different exhaust notes. And a funny thing was the cows in New England went “Moo” when you hit them.

VALUE – perfect in its day.

Summary – in all it was a ground breaking, action packed game that kept you and your mates entertained for hours on end. Surely one of the games that helped consoles take off. This game goes down in history and no other bike game has ever been made like this since (excluding Roadrash for PC/PS1). If you didn’t play this back in the day – then you missed out !!