Many games, particularly of the licenced variety, slip through the net as the years and console generations go by, but inevitably there are always a few people that remember fondly titles that have been forgotten by most. Konamis NES extreme sports brawler RollerGames, a game adaptation of a TV show, is one such title that Peter Willington recalls from his childhood.
RollerGames, as a TV show, was weird. A spin off of the Roller Derby concept of pitting two teams against one another on a circuit in order to score points by out skating (and often out fighting) one another, TV producers Mike Miller and David Sams decided to approach Bill Griffiths Sr. – the owner of Roller Games (with an all important space) – to produce a more theatrical version of the sport to go up against the likes of WWF and WCW. Rival teams of skaters would face off on and off the track, in corny slagging matches where hair got pulled, names got shouted and lines of dialogue were butchered. Running for just one season and despite a hardcore audience that still exists to this day the show was deemed a flop and ultimately canned, but not before the marketing men got involved.
Producing a single issue of a dedicated magazine, a soundtrack CD to accompany the show, a pinball table made by legendary designer Steve Ritchie and producing a full two video games by an at-the-top-of-their-game Konami, one for the home on the NES (the subject of this article) and one for the arcades; the RollerGames franchise was nothing if not exceptionally good at capitalising on an audience that – arguably – wasn’t there to begin with.
Despite the series never getting an airing in Europe, the games were bizarrely released in the PAL territories. Imagine that for a moment. In 1990, towards the end of the NES’ era of dominance, a game based on a fairly weak license is released on the system, to an audience that had never heard of the show, owing to it having not been shown in Europe. It makes no sense, but it’s what the owners of RollerGames decided upon. And by gosh, if I wasn’t bought a copy one Christmas as a gift.
When I first started writing this piece, I had no idea about the storied history of the show itself, indeed until a couple of years ago I had no idea RollerGames was a licence-based game! Playing the title as a child, the universe that is painted is remarkably vivid, despite very rudimentary story telling through brief, minimally animated cut scenes preceding the titles stages. The Rockers, Hot Flash and the mighty T-Birds have put their differences aside to take on the ‘bad teams’ The Violators, The Maniacs and Bad Attitude, all in the name of rescuing the owner of WAR – the World Alliance of Rollersports – from a variety of deadly areas using nothing but their fists and skates to deliver rough justice. Deserted city streets, a junk yard, dangerous jungles and one final encounter at the main bad guy’s HQ, interspersed with high speed runs down broken down free ways; think Final Fight or Double Dragon in terms of feel and you’re about there.
On its way to the closing credits, RollerGames throws a surprisingly varied amount of obstacles in your way. There are skaters to fight, Molotov cocktails to avoid, wrecking balls to pass, motorcycle gangs to vanquish, crazed wildlife to combat – hell, there’s even a helicopter gunship to handle at one point! Whether avoiding an enemy or tackling it direct, the game holds your attention firmly in place, requiring split second timings and route memorisation of the player. If you thought the Mega Man games were hard, think again; this takes that concept of play, fail, learn, repeat to the next level and, with a paltry handful of lives to your name, making it to the final showdown is a real challenge. Opening as it means to go on, few players will make it out of the first two areas their first time with the title and when it’s game over, that’s it, you have to start the entirety of the adventure again. It punishes the player at every opportunity, floors fall away with little to no time to react, flame-throwers ignite the air in exactly the wrong spot to facilitate safe skating and most bad guys will floor you with a single hit, breaking the flow of your game. The game hates you and you have to work incredibly hard to gain its respect.
It’s this constant sense of momentum, this feeling of actually skating that will leave a lasting impression. Beyond the bright visuals and fluid movement, past the genuinely rocking soundtrack, RollerGames conveys the kineticism involved in with the sport far better than every other extreme sports themed title of the time and would only be surpassed years later with Thrasher: Skate And Destroy for the original PlayStation. When a playthrough of RollerGames is going well, you are breezing through the environments, making light work of the objects in your way. Ideally a player never stops for anything, most foes can be dropped quickly, most areas have paths to more efficiently navigate the course. The entirety of the game can be completed in under half an hour if down correctly, but getting to a level of skill where this is a possibility will take weeks of practice and dozens of broken-in-frustration controllers. There are minor things that reinforce this notion of skating too, techniques real life skaters will recognise and implement for a better playthrough. One particularly evident example is the use of walls to slow your momentum immediately, something you’ll have to learn to do if you want to stop on a dime to avoid the various hazards the game throws at you.
Like the TV series itself, RollerGames sadly wasn’t a huge success, despite being a novel, exciting and innovative title. It’s not available on the Virtual Console service, never got a sequel, isn’t part of a bigger collection elsewhere, so your only way to play the game is with an original copy. That’s disappointing, because RollerGames is easily one of my favourite NES games. It’s experimental, faithful to the sport it’s representing in its gameplay and is a great platformer / brawler hybrid that anyone with a slightly masochistic streak can enjoy. I want my RollerGames re-release so that more people can experience this forgotten classic, a game that defined my childhood and coloured my perceptions of action sports video games forever.
