Ludography
69/100
Players14 ratings
Road Blasters cover

1987 · Atari Games · Arcade · Racing

Road Blasters

Timed Nintendo exclusive

The objective of the game is to complete all 50 rallies without running out of fuel. There is no limit to how many vehicles a player can receive to complete a rally, as long as they have fuel. However, the destruction of the vehicle will subtract a small amount from the player's fuel tank. In the arcade, Genesis and Lynx versions, players could start the game at a higher rally, with additional opportunities to jump several levels from time to time.

Released
1987
Platforms
AmigaAmstrad CPCArcadeAtari LynxAtari STAtari ST/STECommodore 64Commodore C64/128/MAXMotorola 68010NESSega GenesisZX Spectrum
Genres
ArcadeRacingShooterVehicular combat
Developers
Atari Games
Publishers
U.S. Gold
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Third person
Themes
ActionScience fiction
Country
United States
Age ratings
CLASS_IND L
Languages
English

About

RoadBlasters is a 1987 vehicular combat video game developed and published by Atari Games for arcades. The player navigates an armed sports car through 50 different rally races, getting to the finish line before running out of fuel. Ports were released for a variety of home systems by Tengen and U.S. Gold.

Keywords

  • vehicular combat
  • vehicle combat

Media

Road Blasters screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The objective is to complete all 50 rallies without running out of fuel. The player's car is equipped with a cannon that can be used to destroy enemy vehicles and roadside gun turrets for extra points. A scoring multiplier is set to 1 at the start of each rally. Each time the player successfully strikes a target, the multiplier increases by one, up to a maximum multiplier of 10. After missing a target, the multiplier drops by 1.

A helicopter occasionally flies overhead and drops a power-up item, which the player can pick up; these items have a limited number of uses. The player also encounters indestructible obstacles consisting of mines, boulders, floating "spiker" balls, and oil slicks, the last of which will cause the player to lose control for a moment if hit.

Reception

In a capsule review of the Atari Lynx version for STart, Clayton Walnum praised the game's massive length and combination of "standard racing with heaps of action." He added that "If you liked Roadblasters on another system, you won't be disappointed in the Lynx version."

CVG Magazine also reviewed the Atari Lynx version of the game, Julian Rignall went on to say "Roadblasters is a challenging game and is technically superb, with stunning graphics and great speech." He said it was fun but the levels were frustrating finally giving it a rating of 76 out of 100.

Legacy

The game appeared on the PlayStation compilation Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2 in 1998. It was also released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and Windows as part of the 2003 Midway Arcade Treasures arcade game compilation.

A port can be played in Lego Dimensions via an Arcade Dock in the level "The Phantom Zone."

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Arcade31 December 1987North America
Amiga31 December 1988Europe
Commodore C64/128/MAX31 December 1988Europe
Amstrad CPC31 December 1988Europe
ZX Spectrum31 December 1988Europe
Atari ST/STE31 December 1989Europe
NES1 January 1990North America
Atari Lynx31 December 1990North America
Sega Genesis31 December 1991North America

Editions and related releases

Included in
Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2Midway Arcade TreasuresGame Center USA: Midway Arcade Treasures
Ported as
RoadBlasters
Built on it
RoadBlasters

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.