Road Blaster

Road Blaster (ロードブラスター) is a interactive movie arcade game developed and published by Data East, with the help from Toei Animation in illustrating the animation. After Data East became defunct due to their bankruptcy back in 2003, G-Mode bought the intellectual rights to the arcade game as well as most other Data East games and licenses them globally.

Gameplay
The player assumes the role of a vigilante who drives a customized sports car in order to bring the biker gang responsible for his wife's death to justice. As with other laserdisc-based arcade games from the same time, the gameplay consists of on-screen instructions overlaid over pre-recorded animated footage. The player enters a series of high-speed chases in which they must squeeze between trucks, fend off the gang members, perform dangerous stunts, commit acts of vehicular homicide, and narrowly escapes death before facing off against the gang's female leader. The player controls the cross-hair to steer their car toward the correct directions according to the green arrows flashing and beeping beside it, while controlling the gas pedal, brake and booster whenever they light up.

Ports and related releases
Various ports were released for consoles between 1989 and 1997 including versions for the Mega CD/Sega CD, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, LaserActive (titled as Road Prosecutor) and 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (prototyped as Turbo Blaster). However, only the Sega CD version was released internationally under the title Road Avenger, presumably changed to avoid confusion with the similarly titled arcade game Roadblasters by Atari Games (which was ported to the Sega Genesis around the same time). Other variations included one-shot reproductions for VHS cassette players such as Takara’s Video Challenger which was a limited interactive port of the Road Blaster arcade game. The Sega Saturn and PlayStation ports were compilations of Road Blaster and another laserdisc arcade game developed by the same team titled as Thunder Storm (known outside of Japan as Cobra Command).

Yoshihisa Kishimoto, the director of Cobra Command and Road Blaster, later directed the arcade version of Double Dragon. The car from Road Blaster can be seen inside Billy and Jimmy's garage at the start of the game.

Novelization
A novel based on the game is planned to be released between 2009 and 2010. The project is officially authorized by G-Mode of Japan (the current rights holder to most of Data East’s catalog) and is being written by Mary Margaret Park and co-produced by Sekrett Scilensce.

Reception
Road Avenger was reviewed in 1993 in Dragon #195 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.