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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 hands 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 released 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 C64 version, but at least the C64 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, cabbage, Den Watts [Pardon? - Ed] and a pretty bad conversion. Avoid like a concert by The La's [Shouldn't that be "by Anthrax", Tone? - Ed]