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Joyful Road Joyful Road - Japanese Logo - Katakana / Kanji

MARQUEE PICTURE NEEDED FOR Joyful Road - Click for details on how to contribute.

Description

A weird driving game with a car that has long arms that reach out to grab a variety of edible items that appear along roadside.

Joyful Road was produced by SNK in 1983.

SNK released 183 machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1978. SNK was based in Japan.

Other machines made by SNK during the time period Joyful Road was produced include: Lasso, Satan Of Saturn, Sasuke Vs. Commander, Ozma Wars, Safari Rally, Marvin's Maze, Tangram, Pair Play: Champion Baseball Part II, Gladiator 1984, and Jumping Cross

Joyful Road
Joyful Road

Specs

Name Joyful Road
Developer SNK (Japan)
Year 1983
Type Videogame
KLOV/MOG # 8245
Class Wide Release
Genre Platform
Monitor
Conversion Class unique
# Simultaneous Players 1
# Maximum Players 2
Gameplay Alternating
Control Panel Layout Single Player
Controls
  • Joystick: 8-way
  • Joystick: 2-way (left, right) [Hands]
Sound Amplified Mono (one channel)
Cabinet Styles
  • Upright/Standard

Game Play

The object is to drive safely down the road. Pick up enough fuel to stay alive while avoiding other vehicles that go by, grab as many bonus objects as possible including apples, cherries, bananas, acorns, live fish and money, and park your car in the garage. Driving while trying to pick up the goodies is difficult and you can crash very easily on the narrow roads. The pace of the game is frustrating because the hands move slowly while the car itself moves really fast, especially in the later rounds. If one of your hands hits a tree or any other foreign object in its quest for food, the car winces in pain for a few moments until it can use its hands again.

You can get a bonus for putting used-up food into garbage cans. Grabbing fish which leap out of surrounding rivers is a safe bet, but most other bonuses are placed, so you can crash if you try to grab them. The best strategy is only to go for the fuel, since the car is a big gas guzzler and you can also get a bonus for leftover fuel at the end of the drive.

Joyful Road KLOV/IAM 5 Point User Score: 3.55 (1 vote)

Fun Factor: 3.75

Overall Like 4.00
Fun (Social) -1.00
Fun (Solo) 3.00
Collector Desire 5.00

Technical Rating: 3.33

Gameplay 3.00
Graphics 3.00
Originality 5.00
Sound/Music -1.00

Personal Impressions and Technical Impressions each account for half of the total score. Within the Personal Impressions category, Like carries a little more weight than the other factors.

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More pictures

Miscellaneous

This is the original Japanese version of Munch Mobile.

VAPS Arcade/Coin-Op Joyful Road Census

There are 14,717 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society / Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, 9,456 whom participate in our arcade census project of games owned, wanted, or for sale. Census data currently includes 164,294 machines (6,886 unique titles).

Rare - There are 2 known instances of this machine owned by Joyful Road collectors who are active members. Of these, 2 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.

For Sale - There is one active VAPS member with an extra Joyful Road circuit board for sale.

Wanted - No active members have added this machine to their wish list. There is one active VAPS member looking for a Joyful Road circuit board set.

Rarity and Popularity independently are not necessarily indications of value. [More Information]

Flyers

Technical

CPU: Z80
SOUND CPU: Z80
SOUND: 2xAY-8910

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