Road Rash started off awful on Genesis, there were way smoother racers around. Super Hang-On, Super Monaco GP II, F1 World Championship, Outrunners, Kawasaki Superbike Challenge etc., put it to shame. The only good thing out of it was a semi decent 3D engine for the 3DO a lot like NFS.
Although several of those are miles beyond in their arcade iterations, again, all things considered, on Genesis they're still way more successful and impressive than Road Rash, what with their smoother scrolling/scaling, better sprites and even cool stiff like real 3D, mirrors or split screen modes.
Other than the horrible visuals, the gameplay was always at best passable, there was barely any need to steer based on the road in the first entries, just avoid obstacles and use the janky melee to mess folks up like some mobile endless runner. 3D and later games drove janky on top of that too.