Rally Bike ・ ダッシュ野郎
Developed by: Visco Corporation
Published by: Visco Corporation (JP), Romstar (NA)
Released in: June 15, 1990 (JP) | September 1990 (NA)
The Japanese title of Rally Bike is Dash Yarou. Roughly translated, “Yarou” is a gruff way to address someone; basically calling them a bastard. Given this, I’ve been calling this game Dash Bastard in my mind. Which would be a bangin’ name for a band, or an asshole superhero or something.
The astute among us may have guessed that Rally Bike is a racing game. Even though the player character looks like a real Slick Rick on his sweet ride, this game isn’t exactly high on the ‘cool’ meter. It’s one of those gigs where your guy FUCKING EXPLODES if he makes contact with anything on the screen. So your worst enemy is that random tree in your path, or a small rock, or a puddle, and other such terrors. Avoiding the crap on the road is a matter of memorizing level layouts, because a single collision into anything sends you right back to the start of the level. No checkpoints. Why would you need checkpoints? You a wuss or something? What kinda Dash Bastard are you, man?
Another big threat is your gas supply. Running out is an automatic loss, and re-fuel spots are strategically placed far enough apart to kill careless players. The game warns you a few seconds before you’re going to be near one, but oftentimes they’re in awkward spots you’ll roll right past on your first playthrough. So it’s a memory game to an extreme degree. The ol’ pattern recognition part of my brain is a bit fried these days, so Rally Bike was harder for me than it may be for other people. Is that a result of the excessive drinking I did in my 20’s? Surely not.
Rally Bike was originally an arcade game, which explains the blistering difficulty. You get four lives, and that’s it. No chances to earn more, or any continues. Back to level 1 the moment you’re out. Credit where credit is due, it’s deeply satisfying to best a part you were previously stuck on. In fact, I’d say that satisfaction may have well been the driving force behind Rally Bike’s core game design; punishing difficulty and staunch perseverance is rewarded with satisfaction by the bucket load.
However, satisfaction and fun are not the same thing by a long shot. Under those perimeters, I’m not sure I’d call Rally Bike fun at all.
Shame, I really wanted to like Rally Bike. The graphics are cute and colourful, and it controls well enough. But it’s a tedious game that opts to drip-feed your brain dopamine when you manage to eke out a win despite the blistering difficulty, instead of being well designed. The stretches between those dopamine hits are few and far between and very much not worth it, to boot. The game’s music is also kinda bad. I was going to link a song to subject you to, but there are no uploads of the OST on Youtube. Which just goes to show how thoroughly this game has slipped through the cracks of the NES library.
This project is a lot of fun in a lot of ways. Makes me feel like I’m an archaeologist, gently dusting off an obscure piece of 8-bit history the world has forgotten about. But finds like Dash Bastard must be how paleontologists feel when they dig up ancient poop. Nowhere near as cool as unearthing a T-Rex skull, but it’s still historically relevant and somebody out there is going to enjoy it for its merits. Like a small-town museum or something.
All in all, Rally Bike is an unremarkable racer that walks the line between good and bad, tipping over into the ‘unrecommendable and unendearing’ side of the spectrum thanks to the needlessly punishing difficulty. Oh well. There’s always Hang-On…
Final score:
NESJunk 
Never heard of this one! But if it came out in 1990, then that means everyone was probably playing Mario 3 instead 😂
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