Sometimes Things Can Be Too Quiet! - Playing Moto Roader on TurboGrafx-16 for the First Time

The year is 2015. Hunger, war and crime have been erased from the face of the Earth. Machines do all the work. Computers do all the thinking. Peace reigns over the land. And yet the youth of this "Paradise on Earth" are bored. Until...

Moto Roader is a top-down racer developed by NCS (Nippon Computer Systems) and released for the TurboGrafx-16 in December 1989.

Like many TurboGrafx games, Moto Roader has pretty good graphics and music, but with most games of this nature, it's the gameplay that really makes the difference.

You start out being able to select from a bunch of different courses. I started by selecting "Normal" as I thought this would be the best way to experience the game.

Next they give you about $5k to upgrade your car, and THIS is where the decisions really can impact your gameplay. While all of the categories are important for fine tuning your driving machine, the MOST important one is "Handle". There are Type A and Type B handling options, and if you pick Type B you can simply press left or right on the control pad to steer. Sounds easy, right? Well...if you don't change the handling to Type B, or you choose an upgrade that is Type A, you get stuck with controls from H E L L!!!

I believe there is a technical term for the type of control that the Type A handling options use, but I'll simply call it "unplayable". Your car doesn't turn the way you would naturally think it should, and you'll inevitably end up crashing into the walls.

So eventually I figured out to pick the Type B handling, so at least I could control the car. I thought, "ok, now I'll be able to finally compete".

N O P E.

Even with upgrading everything I could think of (within the budget I had) my car still went so slowly I was always at the back of the pack.

Now, if you do happen to end up at the back, you and any other similar cars, will get teleported forward. This actually landed me second place in one of my races, but generally it's just an insult, telling you that you are playing so badly that they just have to push your dead body down the track.

Now, on the plus side, the game does have a bunch of different tracks, you can upgrade lots of different aspects of your car, and you can even purchase grenades and other weapons to wreak havoc on the track, but... all of that doesn't really matter when it seems impossible to even complete a single race.

You can see some of my (horrible) gameplay in this YouTube video:

Honestly, this is the worst game I've had the (dis)pleasure of playing so far on the TurboGrafx, and I wasn't sorry when I finally got the Game Over screen.

Playing Moto Roader was a painful slog. Even forcing myself to play it for the hour-or so that I did was tough. I'm glad I gave it a shot, but I won't be going back.

I think the best thing about this game might be the cover art on the game case and manual. I'm not even sure what's going on, but it's funky and kind of messes with your head. MUCH better than the game itself (reminds me of many old Atari games in that regard).

Moto Roader (and several other TurboGrafx games) were released on Nintendo's Virtual Console back in the days of the Wii, so there are some more modern reviews of some of them. 

You can see the review of Moto Roader on the Nintendolife website: 

https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/2007/01/moto_roader_virtual_console

You will see I'm not alone in my disdain for this game.

Let's see if my next game is any better...

Power Golf!

Until next time Turbo Troops!