Everybody has remembered waking up early on the weekend to watch Saturday morning cartoons. But would would happen if the cartoons were interactive? Well, you might end up with something like Death Valley Rally. The object is pretty simple: Race the Road Runner through each level as quickly as you can while collecting different colored flags, which are worth different amounts of points. When you reach the ending, if you're fast enough, you'll also get a time bonus, but if you're good enough, you'll get a flag bonus. Some of the flags are INCREDIBLY difficult to find, and the fact that you won't usually be able to find them, will challenge (or at least frustrate) most gamers. You can run, turbo run (by stocking up on bird seed), peck, and jump in this wild adventure, as you try to catch the escape the ever-witty Wile E. Coyote and his assorted ACME contraptions.
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Road Runner's Death Valley Rally captures the chaotic fun of the classic cartoons in a wacky SNES game. You'll zip through vibrant levels dodging Wile E. Coyote's elaborate traps and collecting goodies as the speedy Road Runner. The controls can be a bit clunky, and the level design is uneven at times, but the boss battles against a frustrated Wile E. are a highlight. If you're a Looney Tunes fan looking for a nostalgia trip, it's worth a go, but expect a challenge!
Growing up I was a pretty big fan of the Looney Tunes shorts, I played a ton of games starring the characters as I went from Genesis to the PS1. Death Valley Rally was the first game I played which starred my favorites, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Unfortunately it wasn't a great first outing, and the first step was more like a slip and a crash into a bottomless pit as is tradition for this game in particular.
Visually I think the game actually looks pretty good. The backgrounds represent the cartoons well enough and Road Runner and Coyote are drawn fairly nicely. There's actually a pretty good application of scaling/Mode 7 with the Coyote classically falling down the chasm. Every stage also ends with the Coyote's contraptions being ended by extreme misfortune or his own sheer stupidity, so the devs at least know what their source material is about.
It's a shame they forgot what game they were making, because the first stage would lead you to believe that this is going to be a Sonic the Hedgehog ripoff game. But not terribly long afterwards the stages turn into these jumbled messes of platforms and confusing labyrinths. Road Runner jumps like gravity forgot about him, and this combined with the precision the game sometimes demands out of you just gets absolutely annoying. You also have to do all this puzzling navigation while at times the Coyote will just come out of fucking nowhere to land a cheap shot on you. This can be observed as early as the third stage when he dons the green bat suit from one of the classic Chuck Jones shorts that I'm not gonna remember the title for. You can take about 7 hits until you die, which sounds very lenient until you play this yourself and realize how horrifically easy it is to get hit. All of this leads to a fairly difficult game that kids are apparently supposed to be able to play.
Audio-wise the game sounds like it's completely on crack, there's these numbers you can pick up which increases your score and this "BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAH" kind of sound just blares from your speakers at varying pitches. The music at times sounds like a chimpanzee just mindlessly slapped the keyboard, it's been close to 30 years and these notes still just do nothing but baffle me. What the hell is even going on there?
This isn't a horrible game, but it could've been a lot better. I'm disappointed in you ICOM Simulations, go back to Shadowgate games and having my torch go out so I can break my neck on a rock after losing 100 IQ points.
Visually I think the game actually looks pretty good. The backgrounds represent the cartoons well enough and Road Runner and Coyote are drawn fairly nicely. There's actually a pretty good application of scaling/Mode 7 with the Coyote classically falling down the chasm. Every stage also ends with the Coyote's contraptions being ended by extreme misfortune or his own sheer stupidity, so the devs at least know what their source material is about.
It's a shame they forgot what game they were making, because the first stage would lead you to believe that this is going to be a Sonic the Hedgehog ripoff game. But not terribly long afterwards the stages turn into these jumbled messes of platforms and confusing labyrinths. Road Runner jumps like gravity forgot about him, and this combined with the precision the game sometimes demands out of you just gets absolutely annoying. You also have to do all this puzzling navigation while at times the Coyote will just come out of fucking nowhere to land a cheap shot on you. This can be observed as early as the third stage when he dons the green bat suit from one of the classic Chuck Jones shorts that I'm not gonna remember the title for. You can take about 7 hits until you die, which sounds very lenient until you play this yourself and realize how horrifically easy it is to get hit. All of this leads to a fairly difficult game that kids are apparently supposed to be able to play.
Audio-wise the game sounds like it's completely on crack, there's these numbers you can pick up which increases your score and this "BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAH" kind of sound just blares from your speakers at varying pitches. The music at times sounds like a chimpanzee just mindlessly slapped the keyboard, it's been close to 30 years and these notes still just do nothing but baffle me. What the hell is even going on there?
This isn't a horrible game, but it could've been a lot better. I'm disappointed in you ICOM Simulations, go back to Shadowgate games and having my torch go out so I can break my neck on a rock after losing 100 IQ points.
Most things here show a lot of potential, but the level design and controls are just horrible. It's not AS bad after a bit of adjusting, but the last set of stages is pretty awful full stop and feels designed by an A.I. or something. Really not worth the time.
the running fast feels very good. Better, in fact, than Sonic the Hedgehog I'm just gonna say it because unlike Sonic it spread things out so that you had a real chance to run fast without hit by an enemy and killing all your momentum. and the idea of making every level sort of a boss level where the Wile E. Coyote is running around the level with some ill advised gadget is a good adaptation of the source material. still gets too impossible before you get too far into it though.