To be fair, as a 1984 release it’s so easy to make that assumption. Not much more advanced than those mechanical arcade games where a plastic road scrolls and you turn a steering wheel to move your car left and right to avoid the other plastic vehicles. For the longest time, I assumed it was just a primitive evolutionary step in the racing genre. Road Fighter very much falls into that category. But get to know them intimately and you’ll have a friend for life. Fail to do so and you could easily dismiss an arcade game as shallow or too easy. I don’t really like the expression “You’re playing it wrong,” but with score attack games there’s definitely a way to play them right. Once you understand what makes them tick, once you stop playing them to “complete” them and play for a high score instead, that’s when the scales fall from your eyes and you see these games for what they really are – genius clockwork mechanisms that are expertly constructed to push you to your limit, plumbing their hidden depths and deepening your appreciation. Little gems like Taito’s Zoo Keeper or Namco’s Mr Driller, less celebrated by the general gaming public, have become some of my all-time favourites for precisely one reason. There’s something about a score attack game that I really love.
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