1st June 1988
Road Blasters
Eat dust, buster. You've got to be a hard-nosed highway star to handle RoadBlasters, the ultimate driving and combat game so far.
In the end, only one Tarmac Titan can survive in this half-crazed future. Who will that warrior be? Can you deliver the fatal blow? Well, you'll need tip-top driving skills, deadly accurate shooting talents and staying power to triumph in this half road-race, half combat but 100 per cent excitement game.
US Gold's conversion of this fantastic Atari coin-op based on the Matchbox toy car should be erupting into the software stores any day now.
The task of putting RoadBlasters onto the Commodore 64 has fallen to Amazing Products, the father and son programming team responsible for the C64 version of OutRun, now probably the world's best-selling game.
The aim of RoadBlasters is to keep right on to the end of the road - and survive! But this game makes OutRun look like a Sunday afternoon pleasure drive. All hell lets loose as attacks come from other cars, bikes, mines and road-side gun emplacements.
The car you drive is already equipped with a laser to put zap in your zip. The road leads through a progression of countries with alternating checkpoints and rally points.
The checkpoints are midway goals to aim for with the promise of extra fuel to top up your gas guzzler. Rally points are similar to the finish lines in ordinary races. Get there and you have completed a race section. In all, there are fifty sections to complete.
The game ends not if you get blown up a few times - and you will - but if you run out of fuel. All the routes have green and red fuel globes to collect. In some sections you can afford to miss out on a few of them but on others it's more or less essential to get every one to complete the race section.
And now for the enemy.
Command cars. These are fast, sleek and heavily armoured. They don't actually attack you but if, under normal circumstances, you collide with one, it's a wipe out. They can be destroyed if you can get the right weapons. Then it's 100 points for you if you can destroy them.
Stingers. These are fast cars which can be destroyed if you're quick enough. Sometimes they will release a fuel pod. You get 50 points for a kill.
Rat jeeps or buggies. These zippy machines can appear from nowhere, cut you up and cause crashes. Again it's 50 points for a kill.
Motorcycles. Fast and lethal if they get in your way. 100 points for a kill.
Mines. At any stage you can come across single or a series of mines scattered on the highway. Avoid them at all costs, otherwise the zoom will turn to boom.
And when you're at full speed, that's easier said than done. On some stretches of the road, the mines are placed in strategic patterns.
Gun Turrets. These are found at the roadside, either on their own or in whole groups. The barrage they lay down can be deadly. Take them out and it's 200 points added to your score.
Sometimes it's best to drive as close to the turrets as possible. In that way it's possible to drive under the fire.
Spikers. These prickly-looking objects are dropped from enemy cars. Avoid them at all costs.
Toxic Spills. Hit one of these and you go slip-sliding away.
That's the sum of the powerful forces against you. But you can even up the odds for survival by collecting other weapons.
At certain points in a race section, a support jet zooms in and drops a new weapon. If you can dock with this weapon - basically by letting it drop onto your roof - the enemy can take a pounding. But if you crash, you lose the weapon.
Up for grabs are:
A Cruise Missile. This wipes out everything on the highway, but you can only fire three times. It's important that you choose the right moment to fire - and that's when the road is packed and a crash is on the cards.
A Nitro Injector. This increases your speed without using up extra fuel. But this can be a double-edged gift. At these high speeds, it's very difficult to react in time to anything in your way. It should be used sparingly to get you out of difficult situations.
UZ Cannon. This increases your firepower by about a third. This is the master blaster.
Electro Shield. Get this and you become invincible for a certain time.
The C64 programmers, father and son Dennis and Martin Webb, have packed all the game's original features into five loads.
"We've tried to keep RoadBlasters as close to the original as possible," said Dennis, who is responsible for the game's graphics. Son Martin concentrates on the programming.
"Nothing has been copied from OutRun," adds Martin.
OutRun attracted quite a few adverse comments from the critics and the Webbs are, understandably, a little upset.
"We gave it our best shot," says Dennis. "We were very proud to have done it. I do hope people who bought the game don't feel cheated."
The Webbs hit the big time as a programming team relatively quickly. Their first published games were Max Torque and Snap Dragon for BubbleBus. Then came the Commodore 64 OutRun commission. And now, RoadBlasters.
Future plans are under wraps at the moment.
Meanwhile, back to RoadBlasters and other conversions.
Work is underway out on the Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore, Amiga and Atari ST versions. At the time of writing, US Gold plans to release all versions during June.
