Classic chassis smashing board game Thunder Road to enter Restoration Games’ garage
Rev those miniature engines.
Thunder Road, the 1986 board game of Mad Max-esque auto carnage, will relaunch as Thunder Road: Vendetta, thanks to an upcoming October Kickstarter campaign from Restoration Games.
The original title, then published by Milton Bradley with the delightful subtitle “the Ram and Wreck Survival Game”, included a double handful of miniature vehicles that players controlled as they attempted to outmaneuver opponents - or else destroy them - while racing down a dusty post-apocalyptic highway.
Each team composed three cars and a helicopter equipped with guns, rams, scoops and other instruments of metal mayhem used in clearing the seemingly interminable wrecks from the road and fending off would-be aggressors. The two-piece game board would replace itself (a la Gromit’s train tracks) as soon as the lead car reached the edge, leaving any stragglers in the proverbial dust.
According to Polygon, Restoration Game’s Rob Daviau said the art direction for the remake will hew closer to grindhouse instead of post-apocalyptic desert, but players can still expect armed vehicles blasting each other to smoking ruin. Daviau went on to clarify that this project won’t require as much work or time as past projects, likely referring to the previous campaign for Return to Dark Tower. The app-assisted board game managed to raise over $4 million but had to push back its fulfillment timeline in January of this year - the company is currently planning to ship in August.
The Kickstarter campaign for Thunder Road: Vendetta will begin in October, according to the Restoration Games Twitter account. A reply in the thread seems to confirm that the Switch & Link game board will return in this version, but the 19-second trailer doesn’t provide much else in the way of details.
Before Return to Dark Tower, Restoration Games made a name for itself by rebooting the 1980s marble panic board game Fireball Island, but also handle the remake of Downforce (one of our 10 best sports board games) and miniatures dueling game Unmatched, which just announced a digital version and second batch of playable characters.