Roland's Ratrace
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Roland Rat, star of British breakfast TV in the 80s, is late for work and his car won't start so you must control Roland and guide him through the sewers of London within a time limit or face getting the sack. To make problems worse, his friends have been kidnapped and must be rescued. The game is a flick-screen platform game with various levels of platforms on each screen connected by ladders and stairs. On the edge of each screen are various exits as well as some exits which go into the screen. Roland must collect pieces of a door and a key to open a large door at the end of the sewer which contains the Inner Sanctum containing his friends. 

Roaming the sewers are wellington boots and if they touch Roland then he loses part of an energy bar and when it reaches zero then it is game over. Various food stuffs can be collected to increase the bar. As well as avoiding the boots, Roland can fire a glue gun which holds the boots for a short space of time but be careful as Roland can also get stuck. Each use decreases a bar but two glue packs can be found to top the bar up. On the bottom level on each screen, a train occasionally appears and can be caught with the glue gun, and when boarded can take Roland the length of the sewer.

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Roland Rat (birthday 12 March) is a British television puppet character. He was created, operated and voiced by David Claridge, who had previously been behind the Mooncat puppet in the Children's ITV television programme Get Up and Go! He worked for Jim Henson, then the second series of The Young Ones. Claridge would later operate and voice "Brian the Dinosaur" for BBC's Parallel 9, create and direct Happy Monsters, a pre school series for Channel 5 and shoot a CGI series Mozart's Dog for Paramount Comedy.

Character summary

Roland lived beneath King's Cross railway station in The Ratcave . He had an infant brother called Little Reggie and had a girlfriend: Glenis the Guinea Pig. His colleagues included dour Welsh technical whizz Errol the Hamster and over-enthusiastic self-appointed "number one ratfan" Kevin the Gerbil, who supposedly came from Leeds and loved pink buckets. Claridge actually voiced all three main characters: Roland Rat, Errol the Hamster and Kevin The Gerbil and they often appeared on screen together. Roland Rat's car 'the Ratmobile' is a bright pink 1953 Ford Anglia. Roland Rat carried the black death.

Roland was notable for his brash and confident personality, which writer Colin Bostock-Smith (who later took over the scripts) states was established by Claridge and writer Richard Curtis.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/rolands-ratrace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Rat
