Road Rash

I'll be honest, the only real way to play this game is to turn the sound off. For all the good points this game has, which are many, the music and sound are not among them. The music is jangly in the worst of Genesis way, and the sound reminds me of a lawnmower being put through a wood chipper.

Now, music and sound notwithstanding, Road Rash is actually a great game. Graphically the game is surprisingly smooth and easy to get into. The sense of speed really does come across, and oncoming traffic as well as action in the rearview mirror are touches that feel ahead of their time. Certainly it's not the prettiest of games, but it certainly does a lot with the specs of the console and it still holds up fairly well today. The gameplay is simple, but addictive. It's not too hard to progress to harder levels and buy other bikes. There's a real feeling that, as you get deeper and deeper into the game, your skills are improving too.

The game is, no pun intended, a little hard to navigate. There is a hotseat two-player mode, but it took me much longer to find it than it should have. It also doesn't carry its sense of progression very well, making it seem sometimes more like a single-race en loop. Finally, the upgrade system isn't very easy to navigate, either. Not to say that these are game breaking, you can find out how these are supposed to work pretty easily, but it is a bit of a damper.

While there are plenty of excellent ports of this game as well as franchise entries, this Genesis release feels like a simple and perhaps stripped down version that focuses on what makes a game great: fun. Provided I didn't need add in my own soundtrack to this game, it possibly could move up about half a point.