Road Avenger
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| Road Avenger | |
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| Developer(s) | Data East (arcade), Wolf Team (Sega Mega CD) |
| Publisher(s) | Data East (arcade), Renovation Products (Sega Mega CD) |
| Designer(s) | Yoshihisa Kishimoto (Director) |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Sega Mega CD |
| Release date | 1985 (arcade) December 18, 1992 (Sega Mega CD) |
| Genre(s) | Driving |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Media | 1 CD-ROM |
Road Avenger (known as Road Blaster in Japan) was an arcade and Sega Mega CD (known as Sega CD in North America) release that took the style of interactive movie (as seen in titles such as Dragon's Lair) and brought it to the world of driving. The on-screen action was a first-person perspective from the drivers seat of a sports car, as you raced through a wide variety of locales, responding to on screen directions in an allotted time limit to continue the action (if the game was set to 'hard' difficulty the on screen instructions would no longer appear, forcing the player to play from memory). Should you miss a direction, or not react quickly enough, a video of your car crashing would be played. The original Arcade game was harder than the Sega CD version, as it had a Targeting System, which you should target an enemy car, before using Turbo to crash the car. If the target wasn't targeting the car, you would die. The Sega CD version, however, removed that feature, which made it easier.
The original arcade version was directed by Yoshihisa Kishimoto, who also directed Cobra Command. Kishimoto would later go on to create Renegade (Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun in Japan) and Double Dragon for Technos Japan. The vehicle from Road Avenger can be seen in Billy and Jimmy's garage in Double Dragon.
The game was first released by Data East in 1985 as a laserdisc arcade game called Road Blaster, although the alternate title of Turbo Blaster was also used in the United States and Europe. The home console version is known as Road Blaster FX in Japan.)
Released onto various formats:
Laserdisc, Arcade 1985 Data East (DECO)
Sega Mega CD/Sega CD, Wolfteam/Renovation under the name Road BlasterFX in Japan, Road Avenger in the US and Road Avenger in the UK - Featured a sung intro by the Japanese group J-Walk, exclusive to the Sega port.
Playstation 1/PSX Direct port of the Laserdisc version
Sega Saturn, again direct port of the Laserdisc version
Search youtube for various ports and intros
[edit] Story
The protagonist is a newlywed cop, who was involved in a car accident caused by a gang called S.C.U.M. (Secret Criminal Underground Movement) that leaves his wife dead, however, he manages to survive the crash. Deciding to seek revenge on this gang, the player will play though a series of high-speed chases in which you squeeze between trucks, fend off reckless S.C.U.M. members, perform dangerous stunts, commit acts of vehicular homicide on the S.C.U.M. gang, and narrowly avoid certain death seemingly hundreds of times before facing off against the gang's female boss.
