Roadwar 2000

1987The date is 7 June 2000. 82% of the population of the United States has died in the grip of an artificial plague spread across the country, the Soviet Union has wiped out the major population centres with nuclear missiles, and on top of that, occupation troops vaccinated against the disease are patrolling the coastal cities.

Only heavily armed road gangs can move about in a land ruled by anarchy, cannibals and mutants. But there is still hope, because eight men of science (women!!) have been researching the secret of a vaccine in different parts of the country. A solution is close, but now they all have to be brought to a secret central laboratory so the results can be analysed. You, a novice gang leader, have been chosen to find those eight precious people and deliver them safely to their destination. At first you have just one little car and eight men. To save the human race, however, you have to acquire men (hundreds of them), vehicles (trucks), supplies (car tuning kits and whatnot) and specialists (a drill instructor, a doctor and a politician) so that you survive the journey across the devastated land.

Now this is what I call action. Never mind that the plague has killed four fifths of the gum-chewing Yanks, there still seem to be plenty of them left to kill. Round every bend there seem to be motorcycle gangs armed to the teeth lying in wait, at least judging by the amount of blood on the blade (the meat plough) of the bulldozer that clears the road for my gang. On top of that, in the cities the local gangsters as well as the occupiers try to set up ambushes, but a volley from a couple of hundred guns in the direction of the first rustle usually has them cooling off in coffins. Captured cities are of course taken under your own control (Long live the Lake Erie Vegetarian Power!).

As an idea, Roadwar 2000 is magnificent. The thought of leading a road gang that stops at nothing across a war-ravaged United States makes every soul corrupted by violent entertainment (Mad Max) rejoice. And since Roadwar is also fairly detailed - five different grades of fighter, 19 different vehicle types from a motorbike to a truck with a full trailer, without going overboard with things like different types of firearm or crew seating positions in each car (which someone will of course miss as well) - it has what it takes to become one of the classics of strategy gaming.

But, but - Roadwar's weakness is its all-pervading clumsiness. It has clearly been written in Basic, so everything happens as if in frozen molasses, even though it isn't even real-time. A couple of bugs have also slipped in, such as a road battle ending prematurely even though a vehicle that was originally yours, captured by the enemy, is still in the baddies' hands, or the mutant attack that always follows an epidemic among your troops (about 10% die) - somewhere a RETURN statement has been left off the end of a subroutine.