Road Fighter (NES)

Road Fighter
Developer: Konami Publishers: Konami (JP), Palcom Software (EU) Platform: NES Released in JP: July 11, 1985 Released in EU: June 18, 1992 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has regional differences.

Road Fighter is a very simple port of the arcade game of the same name. Europe got this game after 7 years with just a small update. America, however, got nothing instead. Poor USA...

Unused Graphics

There are a set of unused cars left among other sprites graphics.

Two frames of animation of the truck doors are opened.

There are two incomplete sprites of barrel animation for more road obstacles. There are no barrels on the road in the final game.

Probably a sewer hatch sprite, but maybe the barrel from the top side as the road obstacle. Both this one and the above obstacles probably appear too small for the game, compared to the used oil puddles and holes.

Various blobs, probably intended to be used at the checkpoints according to results.

Build Dates

An ID string listing the build version and date can be found at the end of the European PRG ROM:

MSTR910502

A similar ID can be found in many other Konami games.

"MSTR" means it's the "master" version of the game, and the numbers represent the date. So, this build was compiled on May 2, 1991.

A different string can be found at the beginning of the PRG ROM, in the Japanese version:

RC801.1.0.850328

indicating the version number and compile date. (Version 1.0, compiled on March 28, 1985.)

Regional Differences

Title screens

The European version has a bigger logo than the Japanese version, as well as a much longer copyright statement. Because of this, the options were moved to a separate screen.

Japan	Europe

In the Japanese version, the car accelerates to 196km/h in first gear. In the European version, the car accelerates to 224km/h.

Japan	Europe

In the Japanese version, if the fuel ratio is less than 10%, it becomes dark red. In European version, the ratio turns blue.

Japan	Europe