Love a Road Rash homage and you nailed it very well, it is very satisfying! :D
I think that was the most recent "serious" game that still featured pseudo-3D rendering (correct me on that one if I am wrong), which sometimes resulted in somewhat trippy geometry (buildings seemed to "flow" due to being "rotated" in Galilean metric instead of Euclidean metric (which then makes me wonder if anyone made a game in Minkowski space, but I digress XD)).
Great job, this is really fun to play! :D