The Games of my Life

(Note: This review concerns the ZX Spectrum version. The C64 one was, IMO, terrible - great graphics and music, but none of the playability, and Robocop could jump!)

Ocean’s Robocop, released during the company’s greatest years, when it specialized itself in arcade and movie conversions, is one of their best ever. A multi-level action game, with a couple of mini-games between levels, and including great graphics, sound (including actually understandable digitized speech - something almost unseen at the time) and music (the title tune was one of those “load up the game just to listen to it” ones).

But the best thing about the game was how great it was to play. It really felt like the movie - unlike other games of its kind, your character was slow moving, didn’t jump (except on the C64 ), and most enemies, indeed (the ones that moved, that is) were faster than you (unlike most games where you’re quicker than everything else). However, you were tough. And had a great gun. And were able to shoot it in several directions.

The idea was not to dodge bullets, but to kill every enemy before they shot at you. If they did… well, you’re Robocop, you can handle a few bullets.

And who can forget the level where (SPOILER!) you try to arrest Dick Jones, but Directive 4 comes into action, you drop your gun, and then have to fight ED-209 with just your fists?

The 3-way gun was a bit weird, though. If it existed in real life, it would kill enemies… by making them laugh to death.

Spectrum action games didn’t come much better than this.

As usual, the game is available at World of Spectrum. And Speccy emulators are perfect, these days - even on Series 60 phones, or Palms, or Pocket PCs, or almost anything.