Please login to submit a screenshot

"The coyote finally gets his dinner"

The Road Runner cartoons are a classic analogy of the small businessman in America prevailing against the overwhelming odds of corporate big business. America owes much of its economic growth as a country to the small businessman, the entrepreneur who struggles to keep his business afloat while the big corporations bathe in a nearly endless cash flow. Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety Bird... it's all the same. Classic ten minute sagas of the little guy with limited resources prevailing against another guy who often has nearly unlimited resources. Bugs Bunny outwits the hunter. Speedy Gonzales outruns a cat. Tweety Bird foils the cat's attempts to grab him and eat him. And the Road Runner outruns and outwits the hungry coyote. The little guy has a track record here of nearly always prevailing (I think the coyote actually caught Road Runner once; he was so surprised that he finally won, he forgot what to do next).

And what better icon for the small businessman than Road Runner? He's a little guy with one talent: speed. In contrast, Wile E. Coyote has unlimited resources. He's always buying new gadgets from ACME as he strives ever so fervently to put dinner on his table. A stupid analogy? Perhaps. Our Looney Tunes heroes often prevail by magical means, and Wile E. Coyote's contraptions often backfire on him with no help from his arch nemesis. But the message of these cartoons is always clear. The cute little bunny rabbit and his other "little guy" friends almost always turn the tables on the predators who try to do them in. It's a rally call for the small businessman to "Hang in there! We're rooting for ya, buddy!"

What does any of this have to do with the subject of this review? Quite a bit, actually. Before we have a look at this game, let's stop and think for a moment. When we examine the dynamic at work in the Road Runner cartoons, we can arrive at the inevitable conclusion that any game based on these cartoons was doomed to failure the moment it was conceived. If this game puts us in the role of the Road Runner, we have to confront the inevitability that we, the players, may not be able to outwit the coyote as cleverly or nonchalantly as Road Runner does in the cartoons. This flies in the face of Road Runner's ability to almost effortlessly prevail. If the game puts us in the role of Wile E. Coyote, our goal would be to catch the Road Runner, and that flies in the face of everything the cartoons stand for. Either way, the game is doomed to failure.

In case you're wondering, we play the Road Runner here. Unfortunately, my little analysis of a doomed cartoon-to-game conversion isn't what drags this game down. If only that could've been the worst of the bad news here... As it stands, this game doesn't need any help from me to run right off a cliff and smack face first into the canyon floor below. It does that quite nicely on its own.

Desert Speedtrap is a true gaming debacle, mostly thanks to awe-inspiringly bad controls. I have to pause and admire the raw talent that went into the controls here. They're a good eighty percent of the problem. The other twenty percent is plain, old fashioned bad game design.

The story here goes without saying. Coyote tries to catch Road Runner so he can eat him. 'Nuff said. Our goal is to guide the Road Runner to the end of the level while avoiding numerous hazards, desert creatures, and that hungry coyote. Forget about the coyote. I'm having problems with the hazards and creatures. They're everywhere! This game has at least three times as many bad guy characters per level as an average Sonic The Hedgehog game. Buzzards, man-eating plants, scorpions, and a variety of other cartoony characters are all over the place. The plants are the worst offenders. Think of them as groupings of spikes (Sonic 2, anyone?). Unlike the spikes in Sonic games, these plants are placed seemingly at random. They're on the canyon floor, on ledges that Road Runner needs to jump up to... It seems there's always a plant standing inconveniently in the way. You can't take two steps without running into another hazard or some sort of creature who's moving around. For a desert, this place is remarkably crowded.

This game borrows much from the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise. I saw some crabs who behave exactly the same way as the crab-bots in Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic 2, right down to the firing of an arcing projectile to the left and right. Sad. Very sad. In addition, there are stars all over the place, much like the rings that Sonic collects. The sound effect when Road Runner grabs a star is conspicuously similar to Sonic's ring-grab effect. Each star Road Runner collects adds two seconds to the clock. Yes, there's a time limit, which usually starts at about two minutes. Now picture trying to get your character through a lengthy side-scrolling level with three times as many enemy characters and hazards as an average Sonic level... in about three or four minutes, considering time gained from collected stars... with over-responsive controls.

Each star we collect adds two seconds to the clock. There are places with many stars all lined up nicely, much like in the Sonic games, but there are also numerous extraneous areas full of stars. Going out of our way to collect all of these stars is... quite pointless, as we're spending time to do it. I found the best way to get through a level is to just rush through, collecting whatever stars happen to be in our speedy Road Runner's path. Unfortunately, these aren't levels that we can just rush through with the directional pad firmly pressed right while jumping to avoid hazards. We have to jump up rocky platforms and maneuver through a gauntlet of hazards and creatures, sometimes going up and then doubling back leftward to get to higher mesas that allow us to proceed forward. There's a lot of that kind of thing going on here.

There are also springs to bounce on and moving platforms to ride. A teleporter takes Road Runner to a secret area full of stars. He has a limited time to collect as many as he can before he's automatically teleported back. Road Runner has a health bar that's good for three hits before he holds up an "Out to lunch" sign and dies. That's not quite enough, given the sheer number of damaging things that stand in his way. Plates of bird seed are scattered about. He can peck these to regain some health, and the last plate he pecked is his restart point when he gets killed (which happened often for me). Three lives and three continues can go by as fast as a speeding truck on a desert highway. Then it's "Game Over" and we're back to square one.

As Road Runner nears the end of the level (if he actually makes it that far), Wile E. Coyote shows up with one of his zany gadgets. He's as inept here as he is in the cartoons (at least they got that part right). He rides a rocket out of control, he drives a truck and tries to run his quarry down, he uses a zany helicopter gadget... rocket-powered roller skates... The same stuff he uses in the cartoons. He races back and forth across the screen until Road Runner makes it to the level's "End" sign, at which point he crashes in an appropriate way.

Now, all of this would be at least acceptable if the game offered us some decent controls. As it stands, controlling Road Runner is a nightmare. He moves so fast and erratically, what would otherwise be average platforming fare becomes challenging to a point of absurdity. He gets up to speed pretty quickly and then has difficulty slowing down. He runs smack dab into those prevalent man-eating plants. When he's going fast and runs off a cliff, he'll float in mid-air for a moment before falling (during this time, he is still vulnerable to creatures who happen to be flying around, and he is completely helpless; great, he took a hit that he shouldn't have had to).

While jumping or falling, it's extremely difficult to get him going in the direction you want him to go. The way he gets those nasty critters out of the way is by jumping on them. Some of these critters are small, and they move around a lot. Even with the timing figured out, it's difficult to get Road Runner to land on top of them. When he has to use a spring to get up to high platforms, he springs upward pretty much out of control. Good luck trying to direct him to land on that small platform he needs to land on. He falls off small platforms with the slightest touch of the directional pad. Trying to maneuver this poor guy through a desert cliff scene full of hazards and mesas is like trying to explain away the plot holes in Battlefield Earth. Good luck.

After running into one of the prevalent man-eating plants, you'll become cautious. Playing cautiously involves moving forward a bit, screeching to a halt, moving forward some more to see if there's a plant in the way, screeching to a halt again, and so forth. Constantly advancing a bit and screeching to a halt becomes rather annoying after a while.

In short, Road Runner is too responsive for his own good. He's responsive to a point where the controls are a liability. I've seen reviews here that claim Sonic The Hedgehog is difficult to control. I've seen reviews that claim other games are hard to control. Sonic The Hedgehog is a marvel of precise control. The differences between him and Road Runner are quite astonishing. When I'm playing Sonic The Hedgehog, I have sharply defined control over his movements. When I play Road Runner, I'm struggling with him all the way.

Visually, this game is top notch. Desert scenery with mesas in the background and foreground... They're perfect. Appropriately cartoony. Looks just like the cartoons. Road Runner is exceptionally well animated and detailed. Wile E. Coyote moves so fast when he's on the attack, it's hard to get a good look at him; but there are some moments when he's stationary long enough for us to see him. He looks good during these moments. Before each level, we see a picture of the coyote riding whatever gadget he's going to use for that level. All are well presented. This is a great-looking game.

Our sound department is just as good. Quality themes play in the background. Music that would be right at home in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Sound effects are all top notch. "Meep meep!", the sound of Road Runner pecking bird seed, his feet screeching to a quick halt. All great. It's a good sounding game as well.

But when the dust settles, the bad controls drag this game down. While some parts are fun (I liked the levels where the coyote drives a truck), there are plenty that end up being a chore to get through. When we have to struggle with the controls, that's clear indication that something is very wrong here. This game was brought to us by my buddies at Probe Entertainment, the same guys who gave us Judge Dredd and the awesome Alien 3. Everyone has a bad project now and then. Desert Speedtrap is a valiant effort, considering that it was doomed to failure upon its conception. If it had better controls, it just might have ended up being much better than it is.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/05, Updated 08/15/11

Game Release: Desert Speedtrap starring Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote (US, 1994)