Rock n' Roll Racing

Rock N' Roll Racing was angled overhead racing game by Interplay. I purchased this prototype PCB from Castlevania4Ever in the summer of 2008. By: Evan G Last updated: October 1, 2009

The intro screen indicates that this game was being shopped by Ocean for publication purposes.

I bought this prototype about a year ago off Ebay when Castlevania4Ever, a Dutch prototype collector, was clearing out his collection. The thing that really caught my eye about this prototype was the unique PCB board, produced by Ocean Software.

It should be noted that Ocean was the publisher of the PAL release of Rock N' Roll Racing. This prototype was obviously made up by Ocean, possibly for sales purposes to shop this game around. The true use and origin of this prototype is unknown.

The dumped ROM image itself is irregular. The ROM identifies itself as being NTSC, despite being a PAL prototype (the binary is actually much closer to the US version). The ROM may be corrupt, though repeated re-dumps were identical. I'm guessing whoever burned the EPROMs did a poor job.

The game itself looks fairly close to completion. The gameplay is identical to the final version of the game, with spikes, guns and jumps intact. The graphics and tracks also appear to be the same as the final game as well. I tried some passwords from the final version of the game, and they all work.

The most striking difference is in the sound. The announcer tracks skip and repeat and sound very much like the devil is talking. The music, the selling point of the game also sounds incomplete compared to the final. The tracks, though the same songs as the final version, are more simplified and loop sooner, though this difference may be because of the interference from the announcer tracks. And yes, I did check if this was just a PAL-NTSC issue, explicitly mapping the game to PAL did nothing.

Prototype	Final - I can't see any differences

PCB Front

PCB Back - whoever put this thing together was a bit rough on the pins

Download the prototype ROM here.