Retro Review: Road Runner
This is the first installment of a feature I’ll be doing on a fairly regular basis, where we take a look at some of the best and worst games the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the other systems of yesteryear had to offer. I decided to start with a game not a lot of people, outside of diehard NES collectors, may even be aware exists. Road Runner, published by Tengen. The premise is fairly straightforward. You take on the roll of the Road Runner from the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, and you have to everything you can to keep from getting captured by Wyle E. Coyote. Pretty simple, right? Well you might be surprised how involved this game actually is. Let’s get started! Meep! Meep!
Road Runner was originally developed to be an arcade game for 1984, using laserdisc technology for the backgrounds and cut scenes, but Atari scrapped the project before it saw release. The game did see an arcade release in 1985 albeit without any of the laserdisc additions. It was then subsequently ported to systems like the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum and also saw a release to the NES by Tengen in 1989. Like all other Tengen releases, this was an unlicensed game for the NES. Obviously, the laserdisc-based backgrounds and cut scenes were stripped out as well in favor of full 8-bit graphics, but gameplay remained basically the same from it’s arcade counterpart.
As The Road Runner, you are tasked with running down the familiar highway, trying to escape Wyle E. Coyote, eating birdseed along the way. If you get hit by an oncoming vehicle or are chased down and captured by Wyle E. you lose a life. And that’s the basic crux of the game. But as simple as the premise is, there is a great deal of strategy and even luck when it comes to playing this game. You have to eat all of the piles of seed, or at least as many as you can, but you can’t waste too much time in one spot trying to get the hit box to detect you getting the seed, or otherwise you’ll fall victim to the Super Genius himself. Ol’ Wyle E. also has a few tricks up his sleeve, utilizing things like roller skates, pogo sticks and rockets to increase his speed. And finally to top it all off, there are maze section in each level that you must navigate all while trying to elude the dastardly coyote.
Upon its release Road Runner received middling reviews. Pretty much 2.5–3 stars out of 5. And I have to agree with assessment. The graphics are a little below those of other NES releases, but definitely not the worst. The gameplay is serviceable. And the difficulty is not too steep while still being very challenging. So in conclusion, I would say Road Runner isn’t a masterpiece, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s definitely worth checking out.
Rating:
2.5 out of 5
