Roadster for Game Boy

Sorry about another boring review, but this is my home for Game Boy reviews at the moment.


Roadster was  only released in Japan, in October 1990. It is entirely in English and well playable. And you drive a cool car.

If you play with the Super Game Boy, you can have a nice looking red sportscar.

Else it will look like this. But it looks alright on the Game Boy Color too. You may know that you can change the color scheme on the GBC if you press different key combinations when it starts. Left+A always works.

Roadster doesn't actually have any special Super Game Boy support. The game was released long before the SGB.


How to play?
Your car has a Tire meter and a Body meter (see pic 1). When the Tire meter runs out, your car will be hard to control. Low body meter and I suspect your car might stop running. You can fix this by going into a pit stop which is goes surprisingly fast.

Your opponents are made so that they drive slower when you are behind, and faster when you are ahead. This is an unreal scenario, but I find it a good thing for a racing game.

There is a "S----G" meter that shows how far you have to the goal.

The arrows on the course will show you where to turn. That's another feature I really appreciate about a racing game, because it makes it so much friendlier to play. You don't have a map while you play, but you don't need one.

The car drives without any greater annoyance, which is otherwise often a problem with racing games. Just know that A starts your car (low gear) and B turns it to high gear.

What's the story?
You race the computer in 5 or more of courses. If you select a 5-course race, it is only 5 courses and I thought it was pretty simple to win it.

This is all the ending you get.

If you select a 10 course race, you first play the first 5 courses and then just continue with another 5 ones. Course 6 is a dirt course with stones and stuff that make you fly around, but after that they gets simpler again. Still the same ending though, if you win. It is also pretty easy to win, and the game is generous with giving you points and the opponents are nice enough to take turns winning.

If there is a different ending after a 20-course race it would be nice, such as end credits. But I actually doubt it.

The game has a 2-player mode, and there is a link cable icon on the cart. It would be  interesting to try and see if you could race your friend. I don't have two carts so I can't try.

Analysis
My verdict for this game is that I think it is fun to pick up and play. I wouldn't mind taking this game with me if I went away on some trip somewhere. But there should have been more to the story mode. You could unlock something, or have a continue function, or see a different ending depending on the character you have.

The graphics work well for this type of racing game. I don't think the game could have been improved much even if you used 64 bits (or whatever they have these days).

Had this been on a modern console, I think they would have put many different buttons to do different things: driving fast, driving slowly, look in the back mirror, breaking, hand breaking, honking, changing view, hold while turning, and what not. Roadster uses two buttons, and even that is one too many. You don't actually need the low gear button.

The music is more bad than good. Luckily the developers realized this and you can turn off the music before you start to race.

As said, the car drives without greater annoyance. I remember how annoyed I was with the similar Game Boy game Micro Machines because of how hard it is to control the small bastard cars in that game.

Thanks to the arrows, you can often win a course the first time you play it.  Despite a boring story mode, I'll give Roadster one 4/5 until I find some other fun racing games on the Game Boy.