Dead or Alive, You’re Coming with Me

While going through the TerminatorIs it a series about a future nuclear war and the survivors of the aftermath? Is it a series of chase movies set in the present day? Is it a series about time travel? That fact is that the Terminator series is all of those concepts. The mash-up of genres and ideas shouldn't work, but the films have proven adept at mixing into a heady series unlike any other. video games I stumbled across the crossover that I had totally forgotten about: RoboCop versus the Terminator. This series of games (Super Nintendo, Sega platforms, and Game Boy versions), based on a comic series, was popular for its time, but it primarily found its success because it was leeching off not only two successful film franchises but also off the good will those franchise’s games had. While you can argue about the quality of the various Terminator 2: Judgement Day games (some of which were pretty bad) the arcade shooter that came out first was pretty legit. And, by that same metric, most people that had played the RoboCop arcade game (which came out one year after the first movie) raved about it. The game was successful enough to get ported to multiple platforms and stand as a solid score for developer Data East, and the RoboCopDetroit's finest protector, this cyborg first debuted in Paul Verhoeven's satirical, over-the-top violent, action film. franchise as a while.

I will note that the RoboCop arcade game was a hole in my video game knowledge because, while I knew it existed I hadn’t actually played it. That was easily remedied, though, via the power of emulation and the internet, and I was finally able to play this arcade classic. And, yes, it does actually live up to the hype as the arcade game provides a pretty solid mix of beat-em-up action, platforming, and shooting, all in a way that makes you feel like you’re solidly in control of the one and only RoboCop.

The game loosely adapts the story of RoboCop. Developed to police the streets, the cyborg cop is sent on missions around town, taking out thugs and invading stash houses, all in the name of keeping the peace. Along the way he’ll have to battle teams of bad guys, as well as reprogrammed OCP robots, all before heading to the OCP headquarters to find the guy responsible for all the carnage. A final battle against an ED-209, a fist fight with an executive, and OCP is saved from the clutches of an evil manager. All in a day’s work for our heroic cyborg.

At its core, RoboCop is a beat-em-up style arcade game. As the metallic hero you walk from left to right (although sometimes up some stairs and then right to left), punching at enemies and shooting at others. You can easily switch between the buttons for the two commands, mixing up combat as need be. This gives the player a free amount of movement for attacks, taking goons and other enemies out as need be with a relative amount of ease. The action is fast but fairly easy to slide into, and the difficulty ramps accordingly to give players the kind of beat-em-up experience they expect.

This really should come as no surprise since the game comes from Data East. The company is known for a number of their beat-em-up games, including Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja (aka Bad Dudes on the NES) and Kung-Fu Master. RoboCop hails in their tradition of solid, meaty fighting games, giving a great belt-scrolling experience with plenty of action to sink your teeth into. RoboCop is weighty, feeling strong and tough but also slow, as you’d expect from a giant, metal man. He has power and heft, making him a steadily chugging force against all the bad guys he’ll face.

He also has a gun that’s fun to use. The basic pistol is sturdy on its own, with a rapid fire feature that can mow down enemies with ease. It’s even useful on the bosses since the rapid fire can pile in the damage when there’s an opening. But there are also power-ups that can be picked up that increase the gun’s power, like a spread shot or a double barrel blast. These are great and infuse a little ContraStarted by Konami in 1988 the run-n-gun platform series Contra was, for a time, one of the flagship franchises for the company. into the proceedings. The most powerful fun, though, is a rifle which fires a massive orb of death that just obliterates anything it touches. These guns make you feel powerful, like you’re RoboCop. It’s perfect.

Design wise, the game is solid. The graphics are clean and sharp, with smooth movement and clear design. RoboCop looks good, as do the big, chunky ED-209 bots, and everything has the feel you’d expect from the license. The music is also great, with a solid rendition of the RoboCop theme along with two other tracks that play across the stages. Everything really has the kind of polish you’d want from a RoboCop game, making this one a really solid experience for any fans of the movies.

With that said, not everything is perfect in the game. The biggest issue is that the game lacks a lot of variety for the enemies. You’ll mostly fight goons and sniper guys from the start of the game through to the end, even when you’re in the OCP building and it doesn’t make nearly as much sense to fight them. You’ll also see a number of ED-209 bots acting as bosses at various times. While they often have different attack setups, and even once show up in pairs, that doesn’t change the fact that by the third time you have to fight one of these things you start to wonder if the designers could have maybe put in some other boss ideas instead.

And, if we want to be really picky, the game doesn’t bother much with the plotline of the movie. It ends in about the same place the movie does, but by and large the game says, “RoboCop is cool. Let’s have him kill dudes.” While I would normally be upset about a game adaptation throwing out the plot of the movie, I don’t think it’s as big a flaw here. You don’t have to think of it as an adaptation if you don’t want to, instead simply viewing it as another adventure for the robotic cop. And from that lens it does work well enough. Maybe it would have been cool to see RoboCop working the case and taking out the bad guys from the movie one by one, but that might have also been too much to ask for a simple arcade game to handle.

Because, at the end of the day, this is a pretty sturdy little arcade game. It might not hew closely to the plot of the film, but it does have enough that it does right that the story doesn’t really matter. It has RoboCop, it has great guns, and it has a lot of actions, all of which plays out smoothly on the screen. Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s a solid arcade experience that can easily hook you in with the fighting and gunplay. It’s the right mix of fun for any fan of Detroit’s savior.