Dashin' Desperadoes

The Good
It's a nice colorful game, when you first try it. The sprites are well-drawn, the action is fluent without any slowdown and some music tracks are pretty catchy. There's a bit of parallax scrolling, although only in the title screen and level intro. Two-player mode is quite fun to play: you can race to the finish line (i.e. the girl) with your friend fighting and setting traps along the way. The best thing here is that all the traps and foes on your track will keep you from an easy win and it will be a challenging race to the finish.

The Bad
However, I very seldom play in company, I'm a single-player guy. And this game is simply terrible when it comes to single-player. To begin with, it's always in split-screen mode. You can barely see just few steps ahead and since it's a horizontal split-screen you have no idea what awaits you a bit higher or lower than your position. Now this game is very fast, your computer opponent rarely makes any mistakes and you will CONSTANTLY get into traps. The game is no fun at all, it's just about memorization. When you do memorize a course you will have to outwit your rival, who is very fast and cunning. He will throw bombs at you and hit you all the time. If you manage to get ahead of him, he will miraculously speed up and foes and traps WILL make you lose your lead. It's a good thing for 2-player mode, but when you race against A.I. it's stupid and maddening. I love challenging games, but there's no challenge here - just frustration. The game is 6 worlds (3 stages each) long and it gives you just 1 life and 3 continues! No passwords in single-player mode either. Arrrggh.

The Bottom Line
If you are planning to play alone - stay away from this game. Can be fun in 2-player mode however.