"This is your Daddy's Crack Down"

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

In the days when our household only had a Genesis, we almost exclusively rented our video games. There were several we would see in magazines that we thought looked interesting, or would see the cover art in stores, but could never find to rent.

This is not one of those games. Until recently, I didn’t even realize there had been a Genesis game that shared the Crack Down name. I found it purely by accident when searching for information on the first Xbox 360 game, Crackdown. Had I seen any version of the game’s box art, I would have more likely pointed to laugh at the monocled baddie on the Mega Drive cover, or the fake Stormtrooper on the US version.

The Genesis version of Crack Down is a top down run and gun game that was originally for the arcades. You play as Ben or Andy, two generic muscle bound heroes common to games of the time. You must stop the evil Mr. X, who I assume is the monocle guy from the UK release’s box art, by planting explosives around various buildings.

When I first started playing, I thought I was finding and disarming the bombs, which seemed much more in-line with being the hero. However, this was 1990 and all bets were off.

The action takes place from a top down perspective, which reminded me a lot of Guantlet, only with rockets and grenades. Around each level are X’s, which mark where you are to place each bomb. The bombs are automatically placed by walking over each X. The top of your screen shows a map of the level, with the location of all the level’s bomb placement spots clearly marked. Since each level has a fairly short time limit, this helps to avoid a lot of frustration. It also makes sense that people planning on blowing up a cyborg manufacturing facility would know where the bombs needed to be placed to accomplish that task.

Enemies are placed in specific locations, and new ones will constantly be spawning from various buildings and crates (they are cyborgs, after all) to keep you on your toes. Your arsenal includes a machine gun, rocket launcher,and screen clearing grenades. You can also punch fools. As with many video games, the common trope here is that your rangeless punch is more powerful than a rocket launcher.

The part of the screen where the action actually takes place is tiny. The entire top half is your HUD. Each side of that shows Ben and Andy’s number of lives and ammo, even when playing single player, and the middle is the level map. The bottom half of the screen is broken up for each player. Again, this is regardless of whether or not you are playing multiplayer. The view area is tiny, to say the least, which makes the incredible amount of slow down make no sense to me.

The one interesting mechanic Crack Down has is a cover system. By pressing yourself up against walls, your character will flatten himself up against them. This is a very important gameplay mechanic to master, as it is the only way to avoid most bullets, since both Ben and Andy walk like they are in their 80′s.

Why did I pick this game?

I noticed recently that the Genesis game was now on Virtual Console, so with the release of Crackdown 2, I thought it might be fun to go check out the other, completely unrelated Crack Down.

Like I mentioned above, I had never heard of this version until more recently.

How does it hold up with time?

Crack Down has a pretty steep learning curve. Death is instantaneous, as it follows the Contra style of one hit kills. You restart exactly where you left off with the message “Ready! Ben” (or, I assume Andy). The options allow for you to increase the number of lives and continues, and has multiple difficulty settings. I was playing on normal, single player and it was a pretty tough game.

Since Crack Down was clearly designed as a two player experience, playing in single player was a bit strange. Only having a quarter of the screen viewable just seemed silly, and the amount of slowdown (as mentioned above) was ridiculous.

The controls are imprecise. It is way too easy to push up against a wall while you are trying to aim your character in the appropriate direction to shoot. I found myself relying on the grenades way too much. Any time a puzzle involved moving platforms or pits, it was a guarantee I was going to burn through most of my lives trying to cross it. The hit detection for falling to your death is horrendous.

Now that I’ve played it, there is probably a reason I had never heard of this Crack Down before.

Tags: Crack Down, Friday Old Games, Genesis, run and gun, Sega

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.