Producer: US Gold
Retail Price: £8.99
Author: DJL Software

Fresh from the arcades, the rubber-burning Atari coin-op has reached the Spectrum, courtesy of DJL Software and US Gold. Set in the distant future, Roadblasters puts the player in the driving seat of a high performance, heavily armoured car.

The player controls the car, burning up the miles through fifty levels of ever-changing scenery. The track is shown in vanishing point perspective and, as the car negotiates the many twists and turns, a distant landscape scrolls around on the horizon. If the car veers off the side of the road into one of the many trees and rocks, it disintegrates in a massive explosion.

Racing down the freeway is only half the game: many deadly enemies are lurking on the track. These include the heavily armoured command cars, sleek fast stingers and erratic rat jeeps which all stalk the highway, trying to blast the player's car into oblivion. As well as these moving enemies, the racetrack is littered with deadly mines and missile firing gun turrets positioned at the roadside.

The car starts off with a standard laser cannon to blast his enemies in the futuristic car chase. As progress is made, a friendly jet appears overhead and drops useful extra weaponry such as cruise missiles, a nitro-injector and electronic shields - useful lot those tricky moments on the highway.

Zooming through the countryside really bums up fuel and this machine is a real gas guzzler. Fortunately, scattered around the track are red and green gas globes which can be collected for fuel.

If the car reaches the end of a track (signified by a chequered piece of road) before running out of fuel, the player can prowess onto the next of fifty levels to continue his or her roadblasting exploits in another part of the racing world.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: detailed cars against a mostly monochromatic backdrop
Sound: catchy title 128K tune with roaring in-game sound effects

Another fantastic arcade machine comes to the Spectrum. But is Roadblasters just a repetition of other failed arcade conversions? Well, it almost has the speed, colour and excitement of the arcade machine and it is VERY addictive. The graphics are similar to Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix, with a detailed main car and background, but with the added attraction of the extra weapons. Each level has a beautifully unique backdrop, which smoothly scrolls in the background. There's a good mixture of simulation and shoot-'em-up but a bit more colour in the explosions - not just green - would have been welcome. Not exactly the arcade machine, but addictive and playable.
NICK [83%]

The popular coin-op has at last made it to the Spectrum. Car racing games are two a penny, but the inclusion of weapons in Roadblasters helps to make it more interesting than most. The game plays rather like a 3-D version of Spy Hunter, with your car speeding down the track and blasting the enemies. The collection of extra weaponry as progress is made is also reminiscent of this ageing game: instead of a lorry delivering it, a jet drops it from overhead. The graphics are rather bland - the monochromatic track scrolls fairy smoothly till you come to a bend, when everything gets quite jerky. The car itself is well-drawn but as the wheels don't appear to move, it seems to float down the highway. The landscape in the distance scrolls very smoothly and contributes to the sense of speed. Despite the mostly bland presentation, roaring down the freeway blasting other cars out of the way is strangely satisfying and, with fifty levels of action, you certainly get good value for money.
PHIL [85%]

Roadblasters is such a fantastic arcade game, that any home conversion is bound to be a bit of a disappointment. Although US Gold have gone a long way towards recreating the atmosphere of the original, the game just lacks that extra graphical edge. There's plenty to keep you occupied as you go roaring down the highway, blasting enemies, guzzling petrol and picking up extra equipment pods. The vehicle doesn't exactly seem like it's breaking the speed limit but the frantic track action soon takes you mind off that. Obviously it would be impossible to recreate the breath-taking action of the original, but one or two more explosions wouldn't have gone amiss. Unlike its the arcade counterpart, Roadblasters the computer game doesn't quite stand head and shoulders above the crowd - but at least you'll be playing this for longer than Out Run.
KATI [84%]

US Gold
£8.99
Reviewer: David McCandless

Forget the Monaco Grand Prix, and cast your best disdainful glare at the Indianapolis 500, because these two great road races are just a Sunday drive down to the park compared with Road Blasters, the roughest, toughest, baddest (and most luridly coloured) race of them all.

You, steering your two door GWB 68 Turbo, drive down a succession of green brick roads (in 'off to see the Wizard' vein), passing through a continent of green countries, racing through green alternating checkpoints, bulleting through rally points, swerving to avoid the sleek and fast (and green) Stingers, Command Cars, and Rat Jeeps who happen not to like you, blasting mines, gun turrets and those nasty metallic conkers out of your way, while trying to catch the green attribute packs dropped by the support jet to acquire an arsenal (honk!) of extra green weaponry and shields - phew!

Yes, this game is green, an emerald 3D driving game with Out Run undertones - but not quite as downright challenging. As you may have already guessed you play a car, one of those Lotus lookalikes with the exposed Nitro-injector engines and those smarmy double exhaust pipes jutting out the back, which you steer along a meandering three lane road. Out of the perspective horizon, nasty opponent cars appear, seeking to give you a hard time or run you off the road. Your only protection is a petty machine gun and your reflexes.

As you progress, you find that those round blobs you've been avoiding for hours are actually extra fuel and ammo, and those flat things you've been running into all the time are actually mines. Then you realise that the funny plane that occasionally appears above you is not trying to drop a thermonuclear warhead on you but extra weaponry instead. It's a learning process y'see.

The car graphics are pretty good, but the control is a little over sensitive and a happy medium is hard to maintain. The road itself, although green and bland, moves very smoothly and realistically and without a whisper of a flicker. The scrolling scenery is a little monotonous - basically trees, bushes and other arboreal delights in guess what novel colour? But in the heights of gameplay passion you rarely notice.

Gameplay isn't overly fierce, but there is a choice of difficulty in the form of regions: Bubble City, the Forest sector and the Desert region - each one being a dab more treacherous than the last. And collision detection is very iffy - you can actually manage to drive over a car before the computer notices that you should be exploding into thousands of green pixels.

This is one of the game's you expect to be good, find it seems rubbish, and then suddenly find it sticks to you like an addictive leech. Although it doesn't compare very well with the original arcade, its remorselessly lulling gameplay, slick programming and the occasional good graphic elevates it to possible Out Run equality.

WHAT A BARG!

Summertime, summertime, summer, summer, summertime! Hurrah - summer is here! And what better way to celebrate the advent of sunny, carefree days than by locking yourself in your bedroom and playing a load of Speccy games? With the seemingly unstoppable spread of budget software, we here at YS thought it would be quite a wheeze to sort out the brass from the dross. So take your seats and upset your neighbour's popcorn as JON PILLAR whisks you with shameless bias through a roundup of the best £3.99ers around.

DRIVING GAMES

2. Road Blasters 128K
Kixx/Issue 34
Reviewer: Jon Pillar

Sadly, RB128 has been tarnished by the yuckiness of the 48K version. It's a blazingly fast racer with the added attraction of being able to shoot anybody that gets in your way. If you fancy a bit of non-stop, loud action spread over 50 lengthy levels - get it.

Label: US Gold
Author: DJL Software
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Frustrated drivers can now buy a little black box called The Avenger. It sticks to the dashboard of your car, and has three buttons. If you're overtaken by some yuppie in a Porsche, can stab at a button to activate three sci-fi sound effects - laser, grenades and death rays. Well Roadblasters gives you the same sort of perverse enjoyment, only this time the cars definitely aren't stationary.

Roadblasters is a long overdue type of game; a car race which allow you to blast your opponents to atoms rather than going through the boring business of overtaking them.

There isn't a tremendous amount of challenge in Roadblasters; it's very difficult to spin off the road, and it's very difficult to miss your targets. In fact I got through to level 10 without having to pay much attention. However, there are 50 levels to complete. The main problem is that unless you pick up a Nitro-Injector to increase your speed, things don't get very fast.

Oh yes. These extra weapons. Well, rather than running into them, you have to catch them as they fall from a passing flying machine. They land on your roof and squat menacingly, and can be activated by pulling back on the joystick. Extra weapons include cruise missiles, which act as a sort of smart bomb, UZ cannon which fire faster than your ordinary everyday bonnet-mounted machine-gun; and electro shields which protect you from enemy missiles, collisions, mines and road spikes. All these special weapons last for a limited amount of time, shown on a diminishing bar.

So you have your weapons, and you're zooming along the scrolling road looking for trouble. It won't take you long to find it. Enemies include sleek, fast Stinger sports cars; heavily armoured Command Cars; fast-moving road rats; evasive motorbikes, and roadside gun emplacements. All of these will try to blow you off the road, and in addition you have to avoid mines, spikes, and puddles of toxic goo which make you spin dizzyingly.

You can veer to one side - rather too far to one side to be realistic - to take out tricky opponents. You can also pick up fuel globes left by destroyed enemies, or appearing in clusters along the road. That's it really; at the end of each stage you get a bonus depending on the number of enemies destroyed, time taken and fuel globes collected.

Roadblasters isn't a terrific racing game, and it isn't a terrific shoot-'em-up. The explosions are very poor, and though sound and music are excellent, you don't really get any feeling of nail-biting excitement. However, there's something very smooth and polished about the whole production, and I'd be telling porky pies if I said I didn't enjoy it at all. Give it a spin and see whether it brings out the roadblaster in you.

US Gold, £8.99cs, £12.99dk
C64 version reviewed Issue 12 - ACE Rating 654

If anything the gameplay is better on this version because the car is more manoeuvrable about the road. It doesn't just stick in one lane when going round corners if you don't turn, however it still doesn't drive naturally. The extra weapons are also more usable and can be carried over between stages if you haven't used them up.

The graphics are virtually vectors, with little filling in. This means the speed is kept up but there's not much in the way of colour. It's probably a bit tougher than the C64 version, but it's none the worse for that. Spectrum Out Run owners will be relieved to know this is a much better conversion than that was. Coin-op blasters should be satisfied.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £8.99, Diskette: £12.99

DJL SOFTWARE are responsible for the Spectrum conversion of this Atari road-racing destruction coin-op, following the disappointing Commodore 64/128 game (TGM010, 47%). Previously DJL have written Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix which received 73% in TGM004 on the Spectrum 48/128 and 74% on the Amstrad CPC (TGM005).

This version of Roadblasters is the most playable, primarily due to the vehicle's manoeuvrability. Your car moves along the road with ease and responds quickly to joystick movements - although over-sensitivity is a minor problem. The scrolling techniques are slightly jerky and the slowness of the car doesn't help the situation. The track layouts are short and not too demanding, with the progressive difficulty pitched at just the right level. The backdrop of hills and cities are attractive but suffer from overall lack of colour.

The sonics are well above average consisting of the purring of the engine, bullet fire and a short but sweet tune at the end of a level.

For all of its bad points, most of which are down to the graphics, the Spectrum 48/128 version of Roadblasters does have playability. It is this all-important factor which sets it above the Commodore 64/128 game.