Roadwars V2

Melbourne House

Status: Full Game, Findability: 5/5

roadwars1

A strange entry now into the GTW64 archives, which is thanks to JazzGhostrider for highlighting on the Lemon64 forums, and then getting in touch with GTW64 to see if we knew anything.

Roadwars was a conversion of a game that was released on the Arcadia arcade system (basically an Amiga inside a cabinet) and was converted by Binary Design. Unfortunately, the conversion wasn’t too great and it got a complete slating in magazines at the time.

The game was full of bugs for a start, and it had a bit of an unfinished feel about it (the top part of the planet slightly corrupted). So when it was flagged up that an improved version existed, with a blue road and better score panels – the question was “what happened?”

At the moment, we have only seen the unfinished edition of the brown road version of the game in an original form. The TAP image in the archive is from the release. The blue road/more complete edition has only yet been located via crack releases – and in particular from Fusion.

JazzGhostrider and I feel that Melbourne House/Mastertronic screwed up the mastering, and took an earlier prototype and mastered that as final. What makes this apparent is that on the UK full release inlay, the improved version is shown on the back (with the brown road version “prototype” is on the tape). It means Mastertronic must have had this “final” version from Binary Design, or at least marketing did when doing the packaging.

I spoke with Nick Speakman (the graphic artist), and he recalls the whole saga of Roadwars being a mess from start to finish. It was developed in the US for Mastertronic’s Arcadia division to be an arcade game on Amiga hardware (as many of you will know). He mentioned that the biggest problem was that every few weeks – the graphics would change. The planet was smooth, then it had craters and then the road would change, then the balls would change.

He distinctly remembered the balls were always designed to be low-res multi-coloured, with a hi-res overlay applied. So confirms that the brown version is definitely an earlier prototype that was far from finished. He didn’t know why this version had been put out there, and never knew at the time either (it was straight onto the next project etc, and never brought a copy in the shots etc).

Oddly, there is also a preview version which has the improved panels and sprite overlays, but with the brown road (see gallery and download). This was released by Laser, and in the code has mention that it is a “Roadwars demo” with “coding by Fran”. It isn’t playable and hasn’t got any title screen. It’s clearly half between the released version and the improved version.

Also tucked within the code is a message to say that V1.1 of the game was written by Francis Knight and was started on the 26th August 1987 and finished on the 27th November 1987. The same message appears in the improved and playable version. The message isn’t within the final release version though.

Additionally, in the actual released (brown road) version, another message exists. Note that on this version, there is no scroller on the title screen. The message seems to be cut off, but says:

“If you have any comments about the quality of this game, telephone Paul Ranson at Binary Design in Manchester, England on PHONE NUMBER, as he was responsible for it… Thankyou and goodnight..Tel..”

Thanks to Magnate for completing the message. So who was “Tel”? We hope to find out soon, but also from Francis about what happened exactly. How did an earlier and bugged version get mastered and put out there? When Francis commented on the Lemon64 entry for the game, why didn’t he note that it wasn’t the right version? Did someone else hack his final game down for some reason?

Oddly, a loading screen was only seemingly added to the disk version of the game (possibly only the US release). On the UK tape release, they just used the Invadaload loader.

But what is really strange overall is the date hidden in the improved version. It doesn’t quite make sense, as the game was reviewed at full price in July 1988. Now, perhaps Francis had accidently put 1987 – which then would suggest that V1.1 with the improvements came after the poor reviews.

Many many questions still to answer – for now, check out the different builds in the download and compare for yourself. If you know of the blue road version getting out there commercially, please let us know!

Contributions: JazzGhostrider, Nick Speakman, Martin/Stadium64, Magnate

Supporting content

Available downloads

Update history

29/10/24 – More speculation about the release date and the V1.1. preview

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 3 Comments

3 Responses to Roadwars V2

  1. Hi Frank,

    So Glad Road Wars is finally being talked about :)
    I mentioned in a 2018 post on Lemon64 that there was clearly two different versions of the game and at that time I believed the blue road edition may have been the tape version while the brown road version was the disk versions (US and EU).

    There is also a Spanish tape edition so I’d be curious if that just contains the brown road as well?

    Has it been confirmed that normal UK tape versions only contain the brown road game?

    On a similar topic, the actual released Arcadia version is a COMPLETELY different game from the version actually released for the Amiga.

    Now there was a review in Zero magazine that shows the arcade version but curiously labels this game as ‘Road Wars II’ !!

    If you do a Google search for this game you will find articles for this mysterious version being released for the Amiga as the budget 16-Blitz edition while the Atari ST budget version was identical to the full price game.

    I’d be very curious to find out if some Amiga 16-Blitz versions actually came out with the rare Arcadia game on there??

    • Hi Glenn, we’re still waiting to get confirmation if the blue road version ever did see commercial release, or if it was just leaked at a later date. I think its going to be down to finding Francis to confirm overall.

      Very interesting about the Arcadia and Amiga differences! Guessing this is your thread? https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=95492 That would be amazing if the Arcadia game had snuck out via the budget label.

      • Hi Frank,

        Yeah that was me :)

        I have a huge interest in this obscure system and even though Road Wars isn’t a great game it just seems to have a very unusual dev history.

        I did reach out to several of the different developers and had some responses but can’t actually remember what from who? :'(

        One very vivid response used the term ‘design by committee’ because I remember we had a little back and forth about a very different infamous Amiga game where the same design philosophy could apply…

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