This week's Arcade Archives release is... Crime City (Taito, 1989)
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Both the Japanese and English ROMs are included. Preference Settings allow solo players to play as the Player 2 character (Raymond Broady) without having to swap controls and fix an oversight that allows for infinite item drops in Round 5 (this fix is on by default in Hi-Score Mode). There is a slight edit- the instruction card page of the manual says "This instruction card has been partially modified", and while the change isn't obvious, it's pretty funny! On the second card, the little drug baggie was originally labelled "ドラッグ", or drug, and this word can be used to refer to illegal drugs or narcotics (you can see the original card in this auction, I couldn't find a proper scan online). In the Arcade Archives version, this is changed to "スコ ア", or score / points, so the reference to illegal drugs has been scrubbed out, presumably done to prevent the game falling foul of ratings boards for depicting illicit drugs in-game. It's OK, they're just 'points', honest!!
From the files of Chase H.Q.! After successfully arresting the likes of Ralph the Idaho Slasher and rescuing the mayor's daughter, Tony Gibson (P1) and Raymond Broady (P2) hang up their driving gloves for a bit to hit the mean streets of Crime City. Overrun with all sorts of illegal activity, ranging from prison breakers to bank robberies and even the kindapping of the mayor, the regular cops are out of options and call i Tony and Raymond to crush out the crime. They may be best known for their driving, but that doesn't mean they can't get the job done on foot- as well as a service pistol and any weapons they can pick up along the way, Tony and Raymond have an evasive cartwheel that's good for knocking seven bells out of the bad guys. pick up bags of cocaine as 'evidence' for points bonuses, engage in a shootout with a criminal holding someone hostage, leap from car to car along the highway... All in a day's work in Crime City.
So, this has been a long time coming- Crime City has never been given a home port until now, with the exception of its inclusion in the SD card expansion Taito Arcade Memories Vol. 2 for the Taito Egret II Mini which is obviously a bit expensive. It managed to dodge home ports at the time and missed out on the PS2-era Taito collections, so it's finally home... And that's a bloody good thing, this game rules. Crime City is Taito's take on the likes of Rolling Thunder and Shinobi- tall player sprite, focus on shooting projectiles with limited ammo, that kind of thing- but with dollops of Taito charm. It plays well too, mostly because of that evasive cartwheel allowing you to plough through enemies, because the bad guys of Crime City are defeated by just being rolled into. You get a fair few different weapons, plenty of different enemies to fight and there's some nice changes of pace like the into-the-screen gallery shooting sections and being lowered down a building via helicopter, it's pretty good!
Crime City's secret weapon is the Taito charm of it all. This is a game where barrels thrown at you explode to reveal vicious attack dogs, you fight the STICK MASTER and punks with pompadours and goofy face masks, you pick up drug baggies for points, your character will shout out a deadpan "NO" if you kill a hostage with no other punishment (from LordBBH's old page on the game, which is where I learned this game even existed), each stage is concluded with a view of the Daily Taito newspaper with headlines like "CATCH HOLD OF SUMUGGLERS!", the final stage has you rescuing the mayor then fighting his evil twin brother... It also has one of the greatest intros of all time, with Tony complaining "Prison breakers? On my day off?" as he stumbles out of bed, washes his face and mutters "Shucks!" while Raymond just gets his gun and says "Well, let's go for a kill time". It is peak 'serious but also extremely silly' Taito, and I love it. One of the most easily-recommended Arcade Archives releases.
As an extra, be sure to have a skim through the Arcade Archives stream for this one- there's a lot of really interesting things in there, such as revealing the music was done by Yasuhisa Watanabe of Zuntata (pointed out by DevilREI on the LordBBH Discord) and design docs that reveal an alternate ending where the mayor really was the bad guy and Tony shoots him (!). Most interesting is what's shown above, the game was going to be called VICE SQUAD but someone else had announced a game with that title, so they had to come up with a new one. Here are some of the suggestions, and they're all amazing. This also explains why there's unused code in the game to display the amusing text TAITO GAME instead of the game's logo- they were having a hell of a time deciding what to call the damn thing!
... One more Arcade Archives post remains before the end of Cohost.