If you’ve played Mr Driller (properly!) then think of Road Fighter’s fuel as being exactly like Mr Driller’s air capsules. Just 300 at first, but the second one nets you 500, and the next 1000, and so on… If you crash or miss a rainbow car then you break the combo and it starts again at 300, but keep that combo going and you’ll eventually rake in 10,000 points at a time! Each time you do this you’ll get a nice top-up of petrol but you’ll also get a few points.
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So avoiding collision is a pretty good idea, but you’ll also need to collect more fuel by, somewhat paradoxically, driving right through the rainbow coloured cars on the road. It burns faster as you speed up and you’ll lose a big chunk if you crash. You won’t get very far without Road Fighter’s ever depleting fuel resource. And this is where, if you’re paying attention, Road Fighter’s beautifully balanced mechanics begin to unfold.
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Or, more likely, you get half way to B then run out of fuel before skidding to a halt and triggering a Game Over.
#Road fighter online game free drivers#
You just drive from A to B, passing traffic and a few other speedy drivers on the way. You can’t really win by taking the lead, and you don’t race multiple laps on a circuit course. Much like OutRun, Road Fighter isn’t a conventional racing game. You’d have a great time doing it too, but I’m not sure it would have stood the test of time if that’s all it did. There were plenty of games that did exactly that at the time, and you can certainly play Road Fighter as a simple driving game, avoiding the other cars and trying to get to the finish line. To be fair, as a 1984 release it’s so easy to make that assumption. Not much more advanced than those mechanical arcade games where a plastic road scrolls and you turn a steering wheel to move your car left and right to avoid the other plastic vehicles. For the longest time, I assumed it was just a primitive evolutionary step in the racing genre. Road Fighter very much falls into that category. But get to know them intimately and you’ll have a friend for life.
![road fighter online game free road fighter online game free](http://fasrride343.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/6/2/126273458/607322944.jpg)
Fail to do so and you could easily dismiss an arcade game as shallow or too easy. I don’t really like the expression “You’re playing it wrong,” but with score attack games there’s definitely a way to play them right. Once you understand what makes them tick, once you stop playing them to “complete” them and play for a high score instead, that’s when the scales fall from your eyes and you see these games for what they really are – genius clockwork mechanisms that are expertly constructed to push you to your limit, plumbing their hidden depths and deepening your appreciation. Little gems like Taito’s Zoo Keeper or Namco’s Mr Driller, less celebrated by the general gaming public, have become some of my all-time favourites for precisely one reason. There’s something about a score attack game that I really love.