Road Rash

How to play Road Rash

1. Choose Thrash Mode for one race, Big Game Mode for the career or Mano-A-Mano for a duel with one rival.
2. Hold ↑ to accelerate and ↓ to brake. Steer with ← →; lean with , and . to turn without losing as much speed.
3. Ride alongside a rival and punch with C or kick with Z; backhand a rider just behind with X.
4. Punch a rider who is swinging a club or chain at you to take it. Your punch button then swings the weapon.
5. If you fall, your rider runs to the bike. Remount quickly before a police officer reaches you.
6. Finish in the top three to qualify. In Big Game, spend prize money on repairs and better bikes.

Controls

About Road Rash

Road Rash is a browser recreation of the 1996 Windows release of the motorcycle combat racer, the PC version of the 32-bit game first published on the 3DO. You start at the back of a pack of fifteen riders on a public road, fight them at speed and try to reach the finish line in the top three. This version is newly written TypeScript that draws a textured 3D road, terrain and buildings in WebGL, with riders, bikes, traffic, people and roadside objects modelled and pre-rendered for this game and sound made with the Web Audio API. It does not load the original program, contains no extracted sprites or video, and plays no licensed music. It is not an Electronic Arts release.

There are five courses, each with its own road and scenery, and each race is as long as the original bulletin board says: from five miles at level one to more than eighteen at level five. The City climbs and drops between brick, stone and glass blocks and rows of painted Victorian houses, with cable car slots down the middle, crossings with traffic lights, pedestrians and divided boulevards. The Peninsula runs from a shopping street through leafy suburbs to open hills and has the heaviest police presence. Pacific Highway is a narrow two-lane road under a rock wall, with a sea wall and the ocean on the other side, tight bends and tunnels. Sierra Nevada winds through pines with guardrails in the bends. Napa Valley rolls over vineyard hills past wineries and barns, with slow traffic in the right-hand lane.

Each course has five levels. A higher level means a longer race, faster rivals who fight harder and more police. From level four on the Peninsula, patrol cars block the road: thread the gap on the centre line or hit a sand ramp and jump them. Oil and mud slicks break a steering bike loose, cones and slow pedestrians make it hop, and road works close a lane. The speedometer and odometer read in miles per hour and miles, with a kilometre option in the Restroom.

Your rider and your motorcycle wear down separately. Punches, kicks and weapon blows drain the stamina wedge; when it empties you are thrown off. Collisions with cars, posts, walls and the roadside drain the damage gauge. A rider who falls is thrown through the air, slides, gets up and runs to the bike. When the damage gauge empties the bike is wrecked and the race is over, and riding over the Pacific sea wall ends it too.

Steering and leaning are separate controls, as they were in the Windows game. Leaning turns more slowly but keeps your speed; steering scrubs speed; steering and leaning together give the sharpest turn, but hold it and the bike slides out. Attacks aim themselves at whoever is alongside: C punches, or swings a club or chain if you carry one; X backhands a rider just behind you; Z kicks. Punch a rider while they swing at you and the weapon is yours. Computer riders have temperaments, fire nitro bursts and hold grudges.

Police officers ride patrol bikes and chase you when you pass. An officer can only arrest you while you are off your bike, so a crash near a patrol is dangerous. In a single race an arrest ends the run. In the Big Game career it costs a fine, and if you cannot pay, the career is over. A wrecked bike works the same way: the repair bill comes out of your winnings.

Big Game is the career. Choose one of eight aliases, each with the height, weight, starting bike, cash and weapon of the Windows character sheet, then head down The Street to Der Panzer Klub, where the bulletin board lists the five races for your level and marks each course you have qualified on with a chequered flag. Finish in the top three to qualify; qualify on all five to move up. The shop sells fifteen motorcycles in Rat, Sport and Super classes and takes your old bike in trade for half its price; most Super bikes carry ten nitro charges a race. Your career saves in this browser.

Thrash Mode lets you pick any course and race straight away on the preset bike for the level you set in the Restroom. Mano-A-Mano puts you against a single rider of your choice; the original Windows mode was a network or modem race between people, so here the opponent is a computer rider. On a phone, play in landscape: steering and lean pads sit under the left thumb, and the throttle, brake, attack and nitro buttons under the right.

A few useful tricks

• Lean through long bends; it keeps more speed than steering alone.
• Save steer and lean together for dodging, and let go before the bike slides.
• Punch a rider mid-swing to take their club or chain.
• Kick rivals toward the kerb, lamps and trees and let the roadside finish the job.
• Stay away from police officers after a crash and remount as fast as you can.
• In Big Game, keep enough cash for a repair bill before you buy a new bike.

Good questions