Hello friends, hope you are having a good week so far. My back is killing me. I might have pulled something moving furniture this past weekend. Hopefully it will be better by next weekend as the missus and I will be painting a room. What have you been up to? Right now we're in the early days of the Olympics. What do you think so far? Did you like the opening ceremonies? Are there any sports you are following? For some reason I was thinking about cycle racing and one of my favorite cycle racing games.
Chances are you've never heard of Clash Road, in all my years I've only seen the cabinet in the wild three times. Two in an arcade and one in a liquor store. The game was never ported over to the consoles as far as I can remember. It's a shame too, it's like the version of pro cycling that should be real and everyone should play! Players are riding in a no-holds-barred bike race. Despite the sponsor logos and authentic looking gear the bikers actually are allowed to punch each other and run opponents off the road. If I could describe the gameplay mechanics think of a mash up between the skateboarding section of T&C Surf Designs and Road Rash. Players have to worry about keeping pace and trying not to lose too much energy before the end of a race. The calorie count that each character has is like the fuel gage in most classic racing games. Players can get more energy by running down joggers, whom I guess give up their water bottles? The majority of the game is avoiding obstacles by jumping over them with a well timed bunny hop while backhanding rivals. Players can collect turtles with letters on their backs. If players spell out "Clash Road" they become temporarily invincible and can plow down opponents. I loved the nuance and control of the game. I would line up my bike with my rivals and then bunny hop right onto their back tire, sending them flying. Often times I didn't need to throw a punch as a simple jump could topple the toughest racer.
Clash Road was also the first game where I saw a burly fighter with a mohawk and beard. If I didn't know better this game was the first appearance of Zangief almost 8 years before Street Fighter II. However the title was not from Capcom but instead by a company known as Woodplace. That studio was perhaps better known for creating Ring King. It was a semi-popular arcade boxing game that was ported over to the NES by Data East. As far as fighting games went Ring King was a pretty good arcade title. There were some questionable elements in the game but these didn't become apparent until 1UP pointed them out in one of the funniest videos ever.
Woodplace managed to make bicycle road racing more masculine and violent than the actual sport yet they sort of did the opposite to boxing...
So those are the two sports type games that I wanted to mention during this Olympics period. I do think that isometric boxing was done better than Ring King however. Taito's Kageki came out in 1988 and was a more well-rounded fighting game with less questionable elements. Are there any sports games that you are playing during these few weeks? Tell me about them in the comments section.
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