Road Blasters logo

US Gold
£19.99

Roadblasters was a disappointment to all upon its home computer release. For once, nobody got the good end of the stick. US Gold held up its hand in defence crying "Wait! You haven't seen the 16-bit version yet!" And then they went into a-game-being-programmed-like silence. For months, nothing was heard. Then Activision release Super Hang On, a perfect conversion and the best road racing game to date.
Coo, everybody thought, maybe Roadblasters will be good. Prepare to have your hopes dashed.

Roadblasters is awful. There is no other way of putting it. I could say that it's as bad as the 64 version, but at least the 64 version was smooth!

Before I really take it to bits, you might be interested in what Roadblasters is. It's a road-racing, get-through-billions-of-stages-in-the-fastest-time-possible without-running-out-of-fuel-type affair like the late Out Run (RIP). It also has lots of other cars that have to be shot or avoided, while at the same time you have to avoid the mines that lace the roads, and shoot out the gun emplacements that line stretches of tarmac.

Some of you will now say "Well, that's just a rip off of lots of other games that are around, Highway Hawks for example". Roadblasters was in fact the arcade original, it's just taken quite a while to get here.

On the Amiga version, the story is a little different. Roll slowly across fifty fairly short stretches of road. Move in and out of traffic in small jerks. Oh no, there's a car ahead, and he's in a different lane to you. Don't worry, fire. It'll probably hit him anyway.

As you probably have guessed, I don't think all that much of Roadblasters on the Amiga. It's slow, jerky, unplayable, uninspired, dull, boring, pointless, gabbage, Den Watts (pardon? - Ed) and a pretty bad conversion. Avoid like a concert by The La's (shouldn't that be "by Anthrax" Tone?).



Road Blasters logo

US Gold, Amiga £19.99

Nuclear war has forced most of the population underground but you - and a bunch of other crazies - are staying above ground with your cars: all you live for is the race to end all races - the Road Blaster Challenge.

So, armed with a bonnet-mounted photon cannon and a drop-ship following above with extra bolt-on weaponry, you've gotta rip up the road (and the other vehicles) through fifty levels of high-tailin' rip-roarin' yee-hahin' chaos! It's that simple.


Maff Evans Road Blasters is one of my favorites in the arcades, so imagine my disappointment when I loaded up what could have been a near perfect conversion, only to find an incredibly easy game lurking behind poor music, average sound effects and basic sprites. The scrolling road is effective, and all the levels have been crammed into one load; I wouldn't have minded putting up with some sort of multiload, just to get a totally accurate game of Road Blasters on the Amiga. Oh well.
Paul Rand I've always been a stickler for this in the arcades, and I have to admit while this is a rather flawed conversion, lacking speech, sampled music and more detailed sprites, it's actually still very addictive. It may just be the yob in me, but I get real pleasure out of blowing all those cars to kingdom come. There's no way of getting round the fact that Road Blasters could have been better as far as the accuracy of the conversion goes but even as it stands, it's a winner in my book.
Zzap: Don't mind me - I'm just here for the beer!!