The Road Avenger

(First Appearance: Road Blaster/Avenger)
Laserdiscs games are obviously not the best form of interactive entertainment, with massively linear gameplay and a complete reliance on a trial and error system, but their full motion video at least allows for action packed and impressive stories to be told. This was a case proven to me by playing Road Blaster at a friends and witnessing the Cheshire cat-esque grin on his face as the camera tore through beaches, hotels and shopping malls all in the name of vengeance.

Indeed, for the man not holding the controller, Laserdisc games can be uber-entertaining.

Data East's 80s classic Road Blaster is one of my favourite Laserdisc games, despite being one of the most linear in terms of control. This is because it tells what regular readers should know is my absolute favourite story. Vengeance.
As the super-cool intro shows, a Mad-Max style gang of punks in high powered vehicles are cutting a bloody streak of destruction through the city with no regard for life or property of the innocent. Escaping their latest window shopping session, the motorheads run a car containing a young couple returning from their wedding off a twisted mountain road, the newlyweds careen into the cliffside and the car goes boom. The gang stops to survey their mayhem, then speeds away.

But this is just the beginning, the young man crawls from the flaming wreckage and sheds a tear for his gorgeous wife. His dreams for the future are now as dead as his instinct for self-preservation.

IT. IS. FUCKING. ON.

Days later, a garage door opens revealing a super sleek monstrosity of a sports car, as red as the blood about to be splattered all over its windscreen. The ignition is fired up and the engine roars into battle. Thus the young man and his red death wagon embark in a non stop 150mph burn through the city, annihilating all gang members and their various vehicles who are foolhardy enough to attempt to stop them. Our hero battle his way through the streets, sewers, factories, farms and scrapyards killing off every single gang member one by one. A war in the streets ensues as the red supercar and its revenge filled driver perform a variety of death defying stunts that would make Michael Knight crap his leather pants, including a mid air collision with several helicopters, a shooting star press over a lake and that jump that Roger Moore does in Golden Gun (minus the swanee whistle sound effect)

Despite the reckless abandon with which the supercar leaves broken bodies in its wake, our hero still ensures the safety of the innocent and manages somehow to drive through hotel lobbies and shopping centres without hitting a single civilian.
At the story's conclusion, Our hero totals his vehicle but finishes off the gang's female leader in a full speed head-on collision. The young man climbs from the burning wreckage and, wedding ring in hand, walks off into the city. The non-stop sounds of engine roars and crashing metal replaced by the silence of the night sky.

The Road Avenger is one of my favourite videogame heroes of all time. A man with nothing left to lose, blood boiling, his final recourse is to stop what happened to his wife ever happening again and if a high octane murder spree is his way of achieving that end, then so be it.
As the credits roll, the driver has lost his wife, his car and gained only a small sense of self satisfaction that comes with his personal vengeance, but to the people who can now walk the streets of the city without fear, he is a warrior, a saviour,
A hero.