Roadwar 2000 [Retrograde]

We were just outside of Pittsburgh when the mutants attacked.

We’d seen them tailing us since DC.  Well, smelled them more than seen, you know what the mutants are like.  They picked off three of our escorts in the first wave, but then our commandos and bodyguards brought their firepower to bear, and we tore them apart.  They only caught us because we had lost two of our hardtop sports cars just north of Bethesda, where some penny ante local gang got lucky with a few shots on our tires.  Fortunately, Pittsburgh is the steel city, and we made up for the losses by bolting on armor to our bus at a foundry.  We also found a few construction vehicles.  Those will come in handy for hauling our supplies.  It takes a lot of food and gasoline to keep a gang like the Rum Runners mobile, and we’ve got a long way to go before we get to the ruins of Chicago.

Roadwar 2000 is a strategy game that borrows the trappings of the Mad Max and Road Warrior movies to simulate life and combat in a post-nuclear apocalypse United States (or, in the case of Roadwar Europa, a post-nuclear apocalypse Europe).  It’s a world where abandoned cars, guns, and ammo are plentiful — and death is just around every corner.

Life in Roadwar is nasty, brutish, and short.  Every turn you can decide to move (if you have sufficient fuel), or search for loot, vehicles, or people.  The people you meet might be weak refugees, willing to join you in exchange for food, or they might be seasoned gangsters, eager to either join or kill you.  Every possible stereotype has been thrown into the blender here, and it works well.  Mutants, Communist invaders, born-again Christians, Satanists, renegade National Guardsmen, and other groups all pick on the corpse of a devastated continent.

Your job is to survive, and as they say, the best defense is a good offense.  As you travel around the country, you’ll acquire vehicles and gang members, and even take over a few towns if you’re lucky.  Become strong enough, and you may be contacted by a secret underground network, the remains of the legitimate government.  They want you to … well, that would be telling.  Let’s just say you’ll want to stock up on gasoline.

The graphics are serviceable but sparse – think Ultima II – and the user interface is daunting, one of those “a different letter for every function” approaches that dominated the mid-80’s.  Print out a reference card from the internet and keep it near your keyboard.  Complicating matters is that the game offers not one but three different systems for resolving car-to-car combat.  There’s a full-on turn based tactical combat (similar to Steve Jackson Games’ Car Wars).  There’s also “quick combat”, which is somewhat faster and requires fewer decisions, and “abstract combat” which is even faster and requires no input at all.  Early in the game, you get a bonus for winning a full tactical battle (your gang can manage an additional car), so it’s worth going for the gusto.

For being so hard to beat, Roadwar 2000 is wonderfully approachable.  It has a wonderful setting (Fallout fans will feel right at home) and crisp, if sometimes arbitrary gameplay.  It’s not for everyone, but I have been playing Roadwar 2000 off-and-on for 20 years now, and I don’t think I’ll be stopping anytime soon.  If you’re handy with an emulator and willing to get your hands dirty, give Roadwar 2000 or Europa a try.

Roadwar 2000 and Roadwar Europa by SSI, for Amiga, Apple II, Apple II GS, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS.  Occasionally available on eBay.