Gaming Memories: Road Runner's Death Valley Rally

Road Runner's Death Valley Rally

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

November 1992

Bllbllblllblll- beep beep!

...I had to.

In this one, we control Road Runner as he speeds and jumps through five worlds while avoiding Wile E. Coyote's ACME-powered attempts to capture him. Contrary to the classic Looney Tunes cartoons, the focus is on the bird, not on the coyote's schemes. Gameplay could, as a result, feel like a Sonic game, since we control another famed fictional speedster. Emphasis on "could".

This adventure takes us through five worlds: The southwest American Desert, at first, but afterwards we explore giant construction sites, long trains, deep underground mines, ending the chase in space, the final frontier. In every level, the dastardly coyote attacks with a different plan, most of them pulled directly from the cartoons; examples include the wingsuit, the catapult, or the Wile E. Robot. Our carefree bird has two means of attack; the main one is his beak. The second is turbo speed, which you can use by holding down the Y button while Road Runner has some energy left in a gauge, which can be refilled by pecking at bird seed conspicuously left on the road. Each world has three levels, followed by a boss battle. These larger contraptions' weak points can be damaged by the beak attack.

A point brought up by other reviewers, which makes sense now when I think back to my own experience, is that levels aren't designed to take full advantage of Road Runner's speed, being filled with a lot of traps that are too easy to fall into if you run the whole time, as you won't have enough reaction time to avoid them. This also applies to level design, with some stages being labyrinthine - owing to a side-quest involving colored flags, which Road Runner can run by to raise, with each flag found netting a bonus to your score at the end of a level.

The game would have been stronger if its stages were more often designed with the Road Runner's speed in mind. But if we disregard that point, and barring a few annoying moments, we have a decent game here. It's great seeing all these references to the cartoons, and it's even better seeing Wile E.'s plans fail in spectacular fashion - as usual. It's a Looney Tunes game, it would be missing something without the usual slapstick humor! And yes, it IS hilarious. I have good memories of this one, as you can tell. Revisiting these has gotten me itching to retry some of them...