The biggest world wide movie release of 1987, Robocop took the film industry by storm.  Hollywood had made another mega money profit box office cash cow, it was a mix of action, intense drama and a look into the future of technology and its many challenges that society may face because of it.

With such a smash hit movie everyone was looking to cash in on merchandising and licensing products and the home computer video games industry was no different.  Ocean software one of the biggest players in the software industry back then, had moved quickly to tie up the movie rights and was able to get the release of the home video game at the same time as the Robocop movie was released on home video (the old VHS cassette for those who can’t remember), so it was a marketing dream.

However a very strange and weird thing happened in 1988 at the original release date of the home video game in particular for the release of the game on the Amstrad CPC range of home computers.  According to Neil Reive who published the Amstrad Action 118 tribute magazine in 2008, the original Amstrad CPC release of the game was not coverd in any Amstrad CPC U.K. based magazine, it had only been picked up by a magazine called “The Games Machine” in a brief update review. Neil Reive had asked the then AA editor, Steve Carey, about this mystery and Steve Carey could not recall the reason behind this. There was a discussion about this in the letters page of AA around the time. Apparently, Ocean did not send out any copies of the game for review. However, French mags did not seem to have any problems getting a copy of the game to review. It did get reviewed when it appeared on budget.  A massive movie tie in game release but no game for review very weird indeed.

Robocop why weren’t you ever reviewed by any of the Amstrad mags at the original release date??? That’s one of those old retro gaming oddities we will never know as to why Ocean didn’t send any preview copies out for review maybe they did maybe the postman stole the copies who knows its just a shame that such a big movie tie in from the biggest software company never got reviewed on the CPC, im sure the Amstrad CPC magazines would have covered it with a great many pages of fanfare, anyways thats history now ….

It did however get a proper review by Neil Reive in AA118 tribute mag and received an overall rating of 84%.

After playing it myself just now what springs to mind? Robcop is an action packed sideways scrolling come sub game come platformer type of game. It follows the movie accurately.  The loading screen looks just like the original movie wall poster but not as colourful or detailed unfortunately.

There are two versions of the game a 64k or 128k game.  The 128K version includes “Robocop” speech as soon as the game is loaded and then you also get the Robocop “prime directives” in speech just before you start the game, sounds just like Robocop from the movie.

The music is amazing and you can turn it on or off and play with just the sound FX.  I like the “boom” noise when the enemy get close and Robocop punches them, you have to turn music off to hear that.

Graphically it won’t win any spectacular awards of achievement but they aren’t poor by any standard, it more than does the job and they are quite satisfying.  Player sprites and the background are both very colourful and well presented and it sets the scene and replicates the movie quite well.

To me the Robocop sprite is very cool looking, just as cool as in the movie, and the enemy bad guys are vaired and come at you in all angles and in different forms. There are enemy that run at you and attack Robocop with flying kicks, then there are really pesky chainsaw weilding bad guys, bad guys who are shooting at Robocop from windows high above, bikies out to run down Robcop and the odd more technically advanced but not as smart killing machine inspired by Dick Jones, the ED-209.

Basically they are everywhere and poor old Robocop has nowhere to hide and must shoot to kill or punch them to death to survive.  Yes its a brutal life living in a technologically advanced future.

Robocop has some help along the way firstly he has an energy bar and three lives, when his energy bar is drained he loses a life.  He can replinsh the energy bar by picking up flashing baby food icons and there are a variety of weapons to utilise but they are very limited in ammo which include a single shot pistol, a three way shooter, a large cannon and a rapid fire machine gun.  Robcop simply collects more ammo by walking over it when it is flashing on the screen.  When Robocop has no ammo left he is left to use punches as the bad guys get close to him.

There are time limits for each section of the game so not only is it dificult enough with bad guys out to kill you from everywhere you also have to make sure you can kill them before the time limit is up and these time limits are pretty damn tough especially in the sub game levels.

What are these sub games?  In the Robocop movie, an innocent woman is taken hostage by a bad guy and Robcop with his enhanced technology and abilities has to take down the bad guys he does ths by using a cross hair that shows up in his helmet so he can never miss he is always a dead eye shooter. In the game though its not that easy and you find yourself hitting the innocent lady, oh dear no! This also occurrs towards the end of the game when Robcop must take out Vice President Dick Jones.  It looks quite good but very difficult to master. Also from the movie Robocop tracks down a deceased enemy and to work out who it is he uses a photo i.d. database.  Its quite clever but that strict time limit puts the pressure on you to solve it quickly and it can be quite frustrating.

The game play is fun and addictive.  There are 9 levels or parts to the game so it has a decent amount of vareity. Player movement with joystick / gamepad depending on what you use is really quite good, you can duck, turn opposite direction quickly and easily, firing the weapons and walking over power ups is really easy and its scrolling mechanism is very good too.  It can be a little jerky in parts when you run out of ammo and Robcop switches to punches or when he walks up stairs in later levels but it does not make the game any poorer as a result.

Encounteing the thugs on motorbikes makes the difficulty even harder but when they are killed the explosion looks awesome and motorbike tyres go flying across screen.  The blaster gun picked up in a higher level just adds to the appeal of the game, thats one cool weapon to have carrying around.

Its a very cool game quite a difficult one at that but its one you’ll come back to again and again…….

8.8 out of 10

PROS

• Excellent movie tie in
• fun and addictive
• awesome tunes and fx
• variety of weapons
• 9 levels with lots of vaiety
• gameplay is spot on
• cool explosions

CONS

• 128k version only has speech
• quite difficult in general
• tight time limits
• bad guys everywhere will you survive all 9 levels on 3 lives?

CPC4EVA