Rik the Roadie

Rik the Roadie is a 1988 action game released by Alternative Software for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron and the ZX Spectrum.

Plot
You are Rik, roadie to the world famous pop group ALTERNATIVE ROCK. In order for Alternative Rock to stay popular, you as their roadie, must get all their equipment to the gig, take it into the hall, and set up the sound levels before the gig starts.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) All three minigames are rather difficult, and must be done on a strict six minute time limit.
 * 2) * The first minigame involves driving Rik's van to the next gig for 200 miles, which is incredibly difficult to do, as the cars show up at random and can block the road easily, especially in the BBC Micro version. If Rik's van even touches one pixel of another car, the van is wrecked instantly and the player loses 30 seconds. It also goes on for way too long, and the cars go much faster than Rik, even if he's going at a measely 1 MPH.
 * 3) * The second minigame which involves carrying the band's equipment is really hard, as it involes waggling the joystick or mashing keys on the keyboard, playing like a poorman's version of Daley Thompson's Decathlon, and Rik's stamina drains way too quickly. If Rik drops the equipment and hurts himself, the player loses 15 seconds.
 * 4) * The third minigame is the easiest of the three, as it simply involves altering the dials to the yellow zone to make the band sound good. If the player goes in the red zone, they lose more time. It's also really difficult and tedious to reach this section of the game without cheating. The timer also counts down extremely quickly in this section.
 * 5) Atrocious music that constantly loops in the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum versions, and the C64 version has some of the worst music to come out of the SID chip.
 * 6) For some reason, in the first level, the timer counts down in real time in the C64 version, but in the other versions, it takes two to three seconds to take one second off the timer.
 * 7) All you get for your efforts is a static screen of Rik's band that flashes multiple colors.
 * 8) The high scores for the game (which use names of real bands) are really high up in the millions. You'd have to play the game for at least a month in order to reach anywhere near the top 40.
 * 9) The graphics are monochrome on the C64 and ZX Spectrum versions, and eye-watering on the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron versions.
 * 10) The ZX Spectrum version features lots of spelling errors.
 * 11) The controls in the C64 version are overly sensitive in the first level.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) Being the roadie of a band would've made a good game concept, but it was horribly executed.

Reception
While there were no known reviews of Rik the Roadie at the time of its release, the game has amassed a very negative reception from many gamers, being considered one of Alternative Software's worst games, alongside BMX Ninja. In Stuart Ashen's book Attack of the Flickering Skeletons: More Terrible Old Games You're Probably Never Heard Of, ChinnyHill10 stated that Rik the Roadie was the most disappointing game that he's ever purchased.

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