Road Rash

Road Rash ranks among the best games ever released for the 3DO, and it's still remembered as a showcase of what the console could do. It's a motorcycle race on public roads, but crossing the finish line first is only half the fun — the other half comes from violence. While riding you can kick opponents, punch them, or hit them with a club or chain, which can be grabbed straight off another rider's hand mid-race. Anyone who falls has to run back to their bike and loses precious seconds. On top of that there's regular traffic, oncoming cars, cattle by the roadside, and police officers who arrest you after a stop and take your money. Winnings buy better bikes and open the way to faster classes, where opponents are more aggressive and the tracks considerably longer.

Technically, it was one of the first games to truly put the 3DO's power to use. The console version wasn't a straight port of the earlier entries but a separate build with digitized characters, smooth scrolling scenery, and a far more detailed Californian landscape stretching from coastal roads to mountain passes. What stood out most, though, was the sound: the game featured licensed tracks from real rock and grunge bands, and their music videos played from the disc in the menus and between races. In the mid-1990s that felt like a small revolution — a console game that sounded like the radio and looked like a music channel.

At the time, Road Rash became one of the main arguments for buying a 3DO in the first place, and reviewers praised above all the combination of brisk racing and raw fun. Its influence on the genre is still visible today: arcade racing with contact combat, where you don't just overtake your opponent but take them out, has its most distinctive ancestor in Road Rash. Playing it today, the controls feel harsher and less forgiving than modern arcade racers, and the longer tracks start to repeat after a while. But the immediate joy of knocking a rival into an oncoming truck still works just as well.