Like Micro-Machines, this game features mini-racing fighting machines.
Moto Roader MC makes several twists on the traditional race-to-the-finish premise of its predecessors (and general racing) by implementing combat mechanics. ¿What does that mean?, It means you can use weapons to knock the opposition out of your way. You can use missiles as your frontal weapon and your rear offensive is the grenade. However, the grenade takes a few seconds before exploding, making this weapon a luck based tactic rather than an effective weapon. It was nice to see how the game rather that focusing the camera in a segment of the track (where your car's located), it zooms out showing the whole thing in the style of Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road, and like such game it also adds terrain obstacles like water sections, ice where the cars can slide and arrows to indicate where the cars have to go when a track has intersections. Taking cues from F-Zero, the game also utilizes speed boosting pads that increase your car's speed as you run over them. Also, you can switch your car's look on the run, although this doesn't affect the performance of your vehicle.
The game has two modes: Race, which is splitted in different categories and Time Attack which, like its name says is the challenge of completing a track in the fastest time possible.
In the XBOX/PS4/Switch re-release, the game's new interface adds the chance of changing the CPU cars look, includes a save/load state function to save and resume your games and even a Forza Motorsport styled rewind function in case something goes wrong. Something that's gonna happen quite often...
If you can reach 1st place it's a matter of pure luck.
Despite these interesting features, the game feels unplayable due to the controls, most of the times you'll be crashing with everything while trying to steer your car in the right direction. Another thing that makes the gameplay worse is the bizarre layouts that you will see later in the game. Some of them will require to warp from one side of the screen to another which can be disorientating and guess what?, as you keep on playing, it just gets worse, reaching its worst in the Dungeon where the game is a maze of warps that will hurt your eyes. For a final display of disfunctionality, the game doesn't have a functional way to tell who's in 1st place and who on last. You have a hint as you and the opponents pop the number of laps left after ending a lap, but not to indicate your current position. So, it fails as an arcade racer.
It is almost unplayable in 1 player mode, but I'm sure the game is a little bit more functional with two or more human beings playing since there's place for five players, and that's when the game might be fun when 5 human players are in control.
Sunday drive after a hard race.
When it comes to graphics, they're quite well made, as we have these fancy detailed race tracks, with colors that are almost on-par with the Neo-Geo. This can be noticed in the Marchen tracks, which feels like minigames for Twinkle Star Sprites, while there's a few that have some dark palettes that look from bad to repulsive, but those are a few exceptions. There's a variety of themes used in this game, from streets to nature like deserts and beaches to fantasylands, horror, and technological-futuristic racetracks. Unlike the previous two entries, it ditches the anime-like racequeens and relies on chibi-like drivers. However, the ending images are quite beautiful, as if the CD technology gave the PC Engine an extra boost on the visual quality.
The music is like the graphics; another point in favor for the game. Since this game was released on the CD Engine, the sound department exploited the advantages of using a CD as we have a "redbook" audio that ditches the chiptunes of the PC Engine (along with any other 16-bit console).
TRIVIAROADER MC
- First entry of the Moto Roader series on the CD Engine.
- It is also the final game of the series.
- Once again, Ratalaika and Shinyuden follow the John Hammond's "Spare no Expanse" principle and recycled the main menu interface and sounds from their Gleylancer re-release just like they did with Gynoug and Nape Retroverse Collection.
Thanks for those words, Nina.
I was feeling disoriented with the game for a while.
Moto Roader MC had the potential of being like the big arcade titles back then, but the weird controls and sometimes strange track layouts (Dungeon can go to hell) just makes a potentially fun and interesting game turn out to be a broken mess. Just buy this release, get the achievements/trophies and uninstall it.
(Sigh) If only Ratalaika, Shinyuden and Masaya could get their act together and bring us Assault Suits Valken, that would be nice.
I knew the "Lea Scale" will be in the negatives today.