Retro Reviews from Memory
Welcome to a new segment where I review my favorite childhood games from memory, go back and play the game. Then revise my opinion because, let’s face it, some of those games from the 80’s and 90’s just don’t hold up. The Score above is provisional. I’ll be back (probably, maybe, like… solid 25% chance)* after I play the game again and write a new review and link it to this post.
Enough of the preamble… on with the review!
OLAF SHITS A WARP! Or something like that. This game is one of those hidden gems most people never got to play. It was a top down racing game that I found much more fun than any Mario Kart offering to date. It was by the same publisher that made the Lost Vikings and the irreverent announcer calling the race was probably one of the best on the system. What he really said was “Olaf Hits a Warp” but the audio on the snes was… not what we’re used to these days.
Honestly, the bad audio made for some great jokes in virtually every game. Take, for example, Street Fighter II (or any of the spinoffs on the snes) – no one has any idea what ken/ryu say when they do the tornado kick maneuver, but the zeitgeist consensus when it first came out was “My Voicebox is Broken!” But we’ll talk more about Street Fighter in another review.
Rock and Roll racing not only had cameos, a great soundtrack, an amusing announcer, and fun/innovative tracks, it had weapons and hazards people could deploy. What I liked about the “car to car” combat was that you could be more intentional with your weapons. Mario Kart is a bit too random and, by design, the powerups are weighted toward people in the back getting items to nerf the front runners. In Rock and Roll Racing, all powerups were equally distributed between players and only your skill in using them let you take (or keep) the lead.
Oh and there was a fun little timing mechanic that let you rocket of the starting line if you could master it. Not revolutionary, but also easier to pull of than similar countdown starting line boosts in other games.
Disclaimer(s)
*We should probably keep in mind that, when I was a kid, we didn’t have much money for games. Where others may have experienced the “rent before you buy” phenomena… that wasn’t really a thing in our house. I saved up babysitting money for an entire summer to buy the SNES. If we were doing well, I might get a single game for Christmas or my birthday, but they were almost always used from the swap meet or new from the discount bin. We didn’t have gamestop or many used game store options at the time. In any case, a LOT of my historical game memories are based on a rental window period that had to align with money, time (I had school, sports, occasionally a girlfriend, and a few part time jobs to juggle with my gaming habit), and whether my save file still existed when i rented the game a second time (assuming it was even available). Some games I didn’t play in their entirety until I got to college and had a tiny bit more money and a teensy bit fewer obligations. Which is to say, these reviews are patchwork at best. But let me know in the comments if you want me to replay any of these games and do a revised opinion review!
