RoadBlasters

RoadBlasters brings to NES the car-combat concept from an Atari Games arcade cabinet from the mid-1980s. The player drives an armed vehicle racing along the desert and mountain roads of the future, with the sole goal of getting as far as possible while constantly topping up dwindling fuel, a resource just as precious as lives.

The game combines racing pace with constant shooting at enemy vehicles trying to knock the player off the track or ram them. Fuel tanks scattered along the track need to be collected with precise shooting, creating tension between fast driving and the need to slow down for accurate target elimination. As the game progresses, stronger enemies and special weapons appear, such as mines or rocket launchers, which can be activated for a short-term edge in the fight for survival. The track also unrolls in front of the player at a fast pace, leaving only a split second to react to newly appearing obstacles.

The game came out on NES in 1990, at a time when the console's market was flooded mostly with platformers and RPGs, so RoadBlasters offered a refreshing genre alternative in the form of an action drive focused on survival rather than race placement. Even today the game serves as an example of how a sense of both speed and danger can be conveyed on limited hardware, even without a broad color palette or smooth background animation that players are used to from later racing titles.

Why play: it's a nerve-wracking combination of racing and shooting, where dwindling fuel can create more tension than any rival.