Game:

Road Blaster (1985)

Duration: 2:38:38

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1

Originally recorded: November 10, 2022

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Well, back to the usual grind. I've only got three more "streams" planned for the year, so being able to do one in a single session was pretty nice. Unfortunately, I couldn't have prepared myself for the suffering I went through on this one. Quick Time Events (QTEs) have never really been my thing in games -- I think past streams have proven just how frustrating I think they are. But playing not one, but two games that are essentially extended QTEs was never gonna be a fun time for me. But on the upside, at least I'd finally have an excuse to try out a Laserdisc game in full, instead of just messing around in Dragon's Lair for 5 minutes to see Dirk the Daring's hilarious death animation a few times.


First up was Road Blaster, the game that was actually requested for this stream in the first place. Better known as "Road Avenger" in the US, due to its North American Sega CD release, I've got to say, the very brief story overview for this game, kind of makes me wish Toei made a companion OVA with all of the "success" footage and some additional story segments. Either way, the game wasn't particularly bad... but if I'd played it with the default dipswitches, it would've been impossible to beat. Resorting to the infinite lives dipswitch may have been cheap, but admittedly, the controls don't feel quite as responsive as a game like this would require. Still, it was pretty and at least the "gameplay" was a little more complex than "hit the right direction at the right moment or die".


Since Road Blaster was considered "too short" by my audience to comprise a solo stream, a companion game was chosen. I ended up going with Cobra Command, a game in the same vein as Road Blaster, made by the same developer [Taito], director [Yoshihisa Kishimoto, better known for Kunio and Double Dragon] and animation studio [Toei Animation]. And while Road Blaster may have taken days off my life, Cobra Command definitely took years off. The game has a much more complex control method, relying on moving a reticle in two dimensions -- as opposed to Road Blaster's strictly horizontal aim -- two types of attack (with slightly different uses) and the conditions for moving onto the next section felt a lot stricter. Worse yet, the game's checkpoint system was absolutely bizarre, with no real rhyme or reason at times. I can see why this would've been popular enough in 1984 to warrant a successor like Road Blaster, but Cobra Command's control system would need a complete overhaul for a modern port.


Honestly, playing both of these games kind of reminded me of this "simulator" I had to use when I was in Driver's Ed almost 20 years back. Granted, the device itself seemed to be be from the 1970s... and didn't give you the kind of prompts that either Cobra Command or Road Blaster did. But it felt roughly as responsive, so I was never really surprised when I got incredibly low scores on that thing. Don't know why that popped back into my head when I was writing this up, but it felt like something that was worth mentioning.


Regardless, neither of these games really awakened any sort of love for this short-lived arcade trend. And I'm not going to lie and pretend like I'm not looking forward to going back to more conventional games next time. But it was a fun experiment, even if I had to cowardly bow out of my original arcade plan. Either way, the fact that paying off my audience with a $10 gift card instead was an acceptable outcome worked out pretty well for me.

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