Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2018/12/07/skyroads-1993-ms-dos-review/

I don’t think there are too many sci-fi themed racing games set in space. There are plenty of racing games set on other planets, but a track actually set in the middle of space with nothing around? The only other thing I can think of is Rainbow Road from the Mario Kart franchise. How the physics of it work, I have absolutely no idea, but Imagine it was funded by someone who had a lot of time, money, and boredom who thought it was a good idea to set one of the tracks in the middle of an asteroid field.

Released in 1993 only for MS-Dos, SkyRoads was developed by Bluemoon Software and published by Creative Dimensions.

The game is a remake of the companies previous game, Kosmonaut, which was, from what I could find, was the first commercially released game from Estonia, which is a country you don’t hear a lot from in the game development world. It was even successful enough for one of the developers to buy his own car. Due to it’s success, we now have SkyRoads.

The gameplay is simple, you control a Skycar. I don’t know why it’s called a Skycar, since we’re in space, not the sky. Maybe it was a bit more catchy than Spacecar, but whatever. Left steers left, right steers right, up makes you faster, and holding down makes you slower. The Skycar will stay at whatever speed you leave it at, which I guess is the advantage of driving in space, once you’ve started accelerating, you don’t need to press the pedals and waste gas.

And finally, the space bar makes your car jump, which is needed for when you’re jumping from platform to platform. If you miss a platform or don’t jump in time, you either crash into a part of the skyplatform and explode and I’m assuming either die or get critically injured, or float off into space, and I’m assuming to wait for someone to collect you, all while speeding off at hundreds of miles an hour into space or a possible asteroid belt.

The tracks are mostly flat surfaces floating in space, so no having to worry about overly complicated turns or course design. Apparently you can just put platforms wherever you want in space. My guess is that there aren’t any laws in this part of the universe (physical and governmental) and this is out of the way for the Space Cops to find you. Like this is the space equivalent of back roads or maritime law.

The goal of each course is that you have to jump from platform to platform on each track before driving through a small tunnel at the end of the road. And if you don’t accidentally crash into one of the obstacles and blow yourself up or fall or jump off of one of the platforms to be lost in the emptiness of space, doomed to float away forever, you have the Oxygen (O2) and Fuel meters to worry about. If you run out of fuel, you can’t control your skycar and you’re either going to crash into something or fly off into space, and if you run out of Oxygen, you just explode. I don’t know how you would explode in space if there isn’t any oxygen. I guess the developers have decided to take some liberties with science as a whole.

The Oxygen meter doubles as a time limit, in that you have to make it to the end of the course before you use it all up, and the fuel meter only depletes when your Skycar is accelerating. If you run out of either, you’ll lose. There is also a bar on the dashboard that shows how far you are on the course, but it doesn’t really matter much, since you’re going to spend your time concentrating on the track, and the speed meter that i mentioned earlier.

Certain surfaces on the course have different effects on your whip. Blue increased your O2 and Fuel, Light Green rapidly increased your speed, Dark Green rapidly decreases your speed, Grey is slippery like oil and if you either drive left or right on the surface, your stuck going in that direction, and Pink causes your ship to explode when you land on it. I’m not sure how friendly this is to color blindness, so you might want to watch a couple of videos before playing.

Some stages also have a higher or lower gravity, with 500 being normal gravity. The game has 10 worlds, with each having 3 stages each. All this really means is that each has a different background, which is nice having some variety in visuals. You can play any of the stages in any order, but it would be best if they were played in order, since it would be easier for beginner players.

The only thing to show for the completion of tracks is that each track gives you a gold medal when you win, each track giving you 7 gold medals total. This is really only for show though. The earlier game that his is a pseudo remake of, Kosmonauts, had a scoring system, which was a nice was of showing up your friends with a higher number.

Following the success of SkyRoads, Bluemoon released the SkyRoads Xmas Special the following year with another 10 worlds. and I threw that game into this review because I couldn’t justify another review for something that’s just regular SkyRoads but with more levels and a Christmas coat of paint. Not only that, I could also claim this as a Christmas review despite it not being the main focus. Only 4 of theme are Christmas themed though, with new artwork for the backgrounds, all of which are obviously Christmas inspired. The rest use backgrounds from the original SkyRoads. I guess the development team just wanted to capitalize on SkyRoads popularity by rushing something new onto the market with minimal effort. How weirdly predictive of modern gaming companies.

All of the gameplay mechanics are the same, so the is pretty much only counts as a level pack. The only real difference is that all of these levels are more difficult, so this is more for the skilled SkyRoads players. Still, it’s still nice to get more levels, because playing the first game could get boring pretty quickly for some players who like a challenge.

Bluemoon didn’t go on to do much else. They released a few more games and a couple of other projects. The only other think related to SkyRoads they released was a tech demo called Stellar Xpress that was meant to to be a 3D version of SkyRoads, and it even got sold to a VR gear manufacture as a demo to be bundled with their headsets, but further plans were abandoned due to the gameplay not being able to be reproduced in 3D. It was also released for free, and it’s a neat little experience.

Since the game is officially freeware released by the company itself, you can easily find a copy on the internet without having to worry about it. And as a result, there have been user created versions of SkyRoads along with games with similar gameplay.

There is a version of SkyRoads called ‘OpenRoads’ that plays the game in a web browser. Unfortunately, the original Kosmonaut or the VR Stellar Xpress isn’t playable through the web browser, but ‘OpenRoads’ does come with a VR enabled version of both SkyRoads and the X-Mas special, which is a neat little addition. But it’s limited to the DK1 and DK1 from what I can get from the website.

There is even a SkyRoads clone called ‘Tasty Static’ (epilepsy warning for that game), which is a fantastic name for a game, and the soundtrack for that game is also free.

And the soundtrack is even free, so if you can’t get those beeps and bloops out of your head, feel free to click the link below to throw them onto whatever devices you listen to your music from.

Bluemoon actually went on to help in the development of the peer-to-peer software behind file sharing programs Kazaa, Grokster, and iMesh and the audio and video communicator software Skype, so Bluemoon not only has had an interesting foray into video games, but an interesting history in tech overall to say the least.

Skyroads managed to leave a little legacy of it’s own, achieving cult status. But it was never popular enough to make it big, but it did entertain a few people along the way. Best of all, all of the games mentioned in this review are freeware that you can download from Bluemoon’s site, which is surprisingly still up. So go download it and have fun.