Desert Demolition Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote (Sega Genesis Review)

Desert Demolition Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released February, 1995
Developed by Blue Sky Software
Published by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

PURPLE STREAK SPEEDS BY! MEEP MEEP THE ROAD RUNNER! WON’T BE IN THE WILE E’S PIE! MEEP MEEP THE ROAD RUNNER! MEEP MEEP! HE’S NOT ON THE MENU! MEEP MEEP! HE’S NOT COYOTE FOOD! MEEP MEEP! HE’S THE FASTEST BIRD ALIVE! HE’S THE FASTEST BIRD ALIVE!

When I say Desert Demolition is baby’s first Sonic The Hedgehog game, I swear to God I don’t mean it as an insult. I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, and I’m almost certain I was once a little kid myself. In fact, I’m pretty positive everyone was at some point. Even George Washington needed to be burped and likely spit up on someone’s shoulder. There’s something you don’t think about, but that seems to be how life works. With that in mind, little kids need games too. Even though there was an SNES in my house long before I got my own game consoles, my father didn’t own the right games for a toddler. That’s why I admire the hell out of today’s game. Desert Demolition is a fantastic game for all ages, but I think it’s especially well-suited for kids ages 5 to 7, or thereabouts. I have no means to test this theory. All the rugrats in my life grew up, the selfish bastards. The youngest is my niece, Sasha. She’s 9 but she’s already a highly-gifted gamer and pinball player. But, she was the closest option to test this theory of mine. She really liked Desert Demolition a lot.. and said it was clearly for kids younger than her. But, like me, she’s just guessing that. Given the fact that we died a combined total of seven times between us spread across four different play sessions, yea, safe bet. And playing this twice each was necessary because this has two totally different play-styles in one. You can choose to play through Desert Demolition as the Road Runner or Wile E. Coyote. It makes a big difference, too.

Instead of rings, you collect stamps. They don’t fly out of you like the rings in Sonic, but otherwise, you should absolutely think of this as a Sonic game.

Regardless of the character you choose, Desert Demolition’s levels are more or less identical. It’s how you navigate them that changes dramatically. The Road Runner, for all intents and purposes, is just a scrawny Sonic The Hedgehog. You run as fast as you can, not worrying about exploration at all and simply trying to reach the goal. There’s the occasional hazard along the road, but mostly it’s just you and the coyote. Avoid him because he’s an instakill, and otherwise, just run like the dickens. It’s VERY Sonic like, including springs, trampolines, water spouts, and even loops. Does it feel like the cartoon? Not really. Not even close. It feels like Sonic if Sonic was facing off against one lone chaser type of enemy. But, it works really well for the twenty-five or so minutes the game lasts. Yep, it takes less than a half-hour to finish Desert Demolition, even on your first play session, not knowing where to go. It’s a pretty short game. But, it’s pretty much non-stop fun from start to finish. It controls responsively. Looks great. Excellent character models. This is a good job. Then we remembered that we had to play as the Coyote.

This takes a while to get the hang of.

Wile E. Coyote’s half of the game isn’t anywhere near as fun as the Road Runner’s. Even though you move much slower, I caught the Road Runner on the first level in literally under thirty seconds. You know, that thing the Coyote has been trying to do for three-quarters of a century now? Yea, I did it right off the bat. It’s not even how you win the game, and he respawns after a few seconds. You just have to get to the end. Touching the Road Runner just rewards you with extra stamps and time.

It completely deflated the experience. While the Road Runner’s segment NEVER feels like the cartoon series, the Coyote’s outright betrays it. The timer is basically the main challenge of the game. You have energy and take damage from everything, including jumping and hitting your head on low ceilings, but I never died from taking too much damage and Sasha only did once, during the final boss. But, we timed out several times on the Coyote stages. He doesn’t move anywhere near as fast as the Road Runner and he controls much stiffer. It speaks volumes to the can-do spirit of this game that it actually is still a little bit fun to play as the Coyote, who has a variety of ACME gimmicks at his disposal. A couple were quite clever, like this:

The tightrope helmet pulley, where you actually do have to balance back and forth while you slide down the rope. I’ve seen this type of thing in games before, but because you’re upside down, it’s never been done quite as immersive. And this is why being able to catch the Road Runner so easily especially hurts, because this type of thing totally fits the cartoon franchise. If not for the fact that they already completely ruined the connection, this would be the thing that puts it over-the-top as one of the best uses of a slapstick license ever, helped along by some of the funniest animation sprites in any 16-bit game. Seriously, the Coyote’s sprites are FANTASTIC! Genuinely laugh-out-loud hilarious. Even funnier is that I’ve never been impressed with Blue Sky Software. I think Vectorman is lame. I think the Genesis Little Mermaid game is incredibly boring. I can’t believe there’s Blue Sky fans, because I just don’t think they’re very good at making games. Remember, these guys were owned by Titus. F*cking Titus! They were a joke when *I* was a kid. They’re the Superman 64 people! Blues Brothers 2000! This is a bad lineage, but this game? Desert Demolition? It’s fan-f*cking-tastic! How come nobody talks about this one? It’s wonderful!

The final boss is the same in both versions. You have to just run back and forth activating levers that drop exploding barrels on this Acme truck that the opposite character is driving. This is an okay ending for the Road Runner’s quest, but the Coyote’s? It’s so lame. Why would the Road Runner need to drive what is, let’s face it, a monster truck? It makes no sense! I’m sure it would have been a massive pain in the ass to come up with two different boss fights, but they really should have.

I kind of get why Desert Demolition slipped through the cracks of time. Probably for the same reasons the Ronald McDonald game by Treasure on the Genesis did. It’s too short, too easy, and based on a children’s property even though the Genesis was marketed to an older demographic. Okay, fine. But, like the Ronald McDonald game, it’s proof that the Genesis really was a console for all ages. Especially with the Road Runner. In some ways, I like this even more than Sonic. There’s fewer GOTCHAs and the level layouts seem to be based around anticipating where players will jump blindly, because I think we landed nearly every “go for it” blind jump we took. We took enough of those that, statistically speaking, some ought to have failed, but if any failed spectacularly, I don’t remember it. So, either we got insanely lucky, or they did some serious studying of play testers. I’m going to assume neither myself nor Sasha were THAT lucky. That tells me that Blue Sky precisely accounted for where players would take those jumps and adjusted the level layout accordingly. That’s next-level thinking on a developer’s part. The extra effort that you don’t expect from a licensed game. Short as it is, I dare say Desert Demolition is one of the best games on the Sega Genesis. Give me twenty minutes of near-perfection over hours of great gameplay every day. Even coming close to perfect is so much rarer than great gaming.
Verdict: YES!