RoadBlasters, the power that rules the road.
"...and in the end, only one warrior will prevail. In the distant future, the ultimate race will occur. Half-road race and half-battle, this will be the final contest between good and evil; a combat zone survival excersize. It will be called RoadBlasters!"
Roadblasters is an arcade game developed by Atari Games and released in 1987, based on a toyline by Matchbox. It is set in a futuristic reality where the ultimate contest merges race and contest where the player determines if good or evil will win by using an armored car to blast apart all evil hostiles sent in their path from other armored cars, to road turrets, and other hazards that get in the player's path. The driver progresses on the road through rallying spots and checkpoints that appear in different places with the latter being midgoals and fuel replenishments for the driver. Run out of fuel and the game is over. Green and red spheres will restore their fuel. If they get a game over, they must insert a coin to re-enter the game.— Front of the arcade flyer
The game saw ports to plenty of systems that include the Amiga, the Atari Lynx, the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum, the Sega Genesis, etc. It was also in plenty of compilations, including Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2, Coin-Op Connexion, Arcade Muscle and Midway Arcade Treasures 1. The game also gained notability in Wreck-It Ralph, where its greater popularity than the fictional arcade game Turbo Time led to Turbo's Start of Darkness where he tried to take it over, causing both games to be put out of commission for good.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Green spheres merely restore your fuel, red spheres give you more fuel.
- Developer's Foresight: Normally, completing a level treats the player to a shot of the car doing a power slide across the finish line, but using the speed boosting power-up just before crossing the finish line has the car race off into the distance and the onboard computer make a comment.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Each time a car is destroyed, it explodes.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: And there are various things that will try to destroy your car with you inside from motorcyclists, armor-adorned cars, turrets, etc.
- Featureless Protagonist: The protagonist is never shown outside their car.
- In Name Only: The game is nominally based on an obscure line of diecast toy cars by Matchbox, but other than the broad premise of "Weaponized cars in a post-apocalyptic future", they share nothing in common.
- Land Mine Goes "Click!": Drive over one and your car explodes.
- No Ending: After clearing the 50th course, all you get for all your blasting is a code for a t-shirt from the defunct Atari Games.
- No Name Given: The driver is never named at all in the game.
- Non-Indicative Name: All we see what Bubble City has with bubbles is a pair of bubble-shaped domes.
- Point of No Continues: If you can make it to the final rally, it simply tells you "one chance", indicating that you can't use continues at that point.
- Score Multiplier: The game mentions that "shooting accuracy increases multiplier". Shooting an enemy vehicle increases scoring by a factor of one, up to a maximum of ten times the enemy cars' initial values. It also works in reverse, as each misfire reduces the multiplier by a factor of one, but will never drop enemy bounties below 1× scoring.
- Vehicular Combat: You drive a car to combat enemies by blasting them off the road.
- Weaponized Car: The car utilised for the game is armed with a mounted gun to blast away enemies.
