Canon Video Game Review: Rollerblade Racer (NES)

First of all, this isn't the review I had in mind. See, I wanted to do a review of Stadium Events for the NES because, if you haven't heard. copies of this game have been selling for a ridiculous amount of money. I tried playing it, but I never could start an event because the controls are just too different than what I have my emulator controller set up for. But that's okay, because instead I played something that was even better. Oh yes, because after digging deep into my ROM Collection, I came up with Rollerblade Racer, a game that originally came out for the Nintendo in February of 1993. I'm sure after people played this game, they decided it was time to trade up systems and get a Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo because man, this game is bad.

First of all, let's look at the cover (photo courtesy of theoldcomputer.com). All I can say is that it definitely is a product of it's time. From the background, to the neon green roller blade straps and pants, to that girl's jacket, it screams early 1990s. This game promises the "most radical race on wheels" which covers a lot of ground. After all, there are many car races, motorcycle races, bicycle races, probably even wheelbarrow races. Do they really have the gall to say that his game is the most radical race on wheels? That's a heck of a boast, one that I feel there's no chance on earth they deliver on.

Enough about the cover, let's talk about the game. Our hero is a boy named Kirk. Kirk just got new roller blades, and he wants to qualify for the Ultimate Rollerblade Challenge or whatever. Kirk has decided that he wants to wear a pink shirt for whatever reason. Well if he can handle it, than so can I. Anyway, Kirk needs your help to qualify, as he needs 5,000 points to qualify for Rollerbladeamania. In order to get points, you have to skate through four areas, Kirk's neighborhood, the city, the beach, and the park. As to who put this challenge together, that is a mystery left to your imagination.

So, the game starts in Kirk's neighborhood, and the game looks an awful lot like Paperboy. The controls are pretty simple, you use the d-pad to go left, right, or up, you jump with a and duck with b. The only reason to duck is so you can maintain speed, or you can duck and then jump to perform a spinning jump that is nearly impossible to land. Kirk lives on a road that needs to be paved and has a lot of dogs and open potholes, but that's okay, because Kirk long jumps like Carl Lewis on steroids. Really, all you have to do is jump a lot and hope you don't land on anything that can impede your progress or cause a fall. If you fall too much, you will have to start over. Qualifying for the Ultimate Challenge is pretty easy, as I did it on more than one occasion after the first bonus stage. But damn it, you have to do all the levels anyway. Well, that sucks. I played it a few times, but never got past the beach stage, even though I had technically fulfilled my end of the bargain by qualifying.

I don't know how much this game cost when it was first released, but I hope it wasn't more than 5 dollars, because anything else would be a ripoff. If your skilled enough, you can get through the entire game in less than 20 minutes, easily. Plus, there's no multiplayer, no hidden secret levels or anything else like that. All there is are the five levels, and the quick "Bonus" levels in between. I know it was a different time, but there were literally hundreds of games that were more in-depth than this, and there are probably a thousand flash games out there today that have more levels and are more replayable than this, and those games are free of charge. The graphics are a lot similar to Paperboy, to the point where I wonder if there was a lawsuit considered. The soundtrack is the same song over and over again, and sounds like a low-rent version of a song that would have been rejected by the makers of Final Fantasy. Overall, I'll give this game a 1.74 out of 10. There's not a lot to this game, and what's in this game isn't all that good.

So, there you have it. Tomorrow I will review Jay Leno's one and only wrestling match, along with the rest of Road Wild 1998. That should be three hours that I'll never get back and would probably be better spent elsewhere, but nevertheless. If you have any future review ideas or whatever, than send them along to me at KtheC2001@gmail.com. Until next time, stay rad everyone.