Game of the Day 3/3/2016: City Connection

[celerystalker]

City Connection is a port of an arcade game that depending on your region, is either that or Cruisin'. It's an oddball little platformer/driving game of sorts by Jaleco, masters of the lower middle class of game design. That's not to say they were awful; Jaleco just put out a lot of stuff that was interesting but flawed, ripoffs of other successful games, and Bases Loaded, which leaves their resumé a little sketchy looking.

In City Connection, you play as a driver is a little red sports car whose goal is to paint the streets of the major cities of the world. Each stage has 4 tiers for you to drive over, and they automatically fill in as you roll over each stretch. Your car has no brakes, but does have two unique abilities. For one, it can jump at two different heights, allowing you to hop up and down between tiers of road, and secondly, it can launch oil cans at the cops, who are constantly on your tail. If you hit a cop and then bump into them, you score big points, which can lead to free lives.

There are two other hazards in the form of cats and spikes that will rise out of the pavement, and the cats are where most of your lives will go, as they can appear from off-screen while you're in mid-jump with no way to stop or turn around. There are also red balloons, and catching three will cause you to warp forward a few stages, getting a big bonus for any oil cans you have along the way. There are I believe 12 looping levels, and as difficulty never really ramps up, it's definitely worth grabbing any balloons you can.

Realistically, that's all there is to the gameplay, but it has that arcade sensibility of aomething like Mappy where you want to keep going for a score you'll be happy with. The music is pretty hokey but distinctive, and probably the worst aspect of the NES game is that its scrolling is super, super choppy. Still, even just putting it in tonight to snap a quick picture with my phone, I ended up playing about 8 credits for about an hour and fifteen minutes, as the gameplay is catchy and holds up. It's a good kind of flawed fun that can really grab you if you can get past its godawful scrolling.

Played it or the arcade game?

[Emperor Megas]

Given your taste in games, we would have probably been friends growing up.

I own this game. It's one of those Jaleco titles with 'Jaleco' printed on the top of the cover rather than the title of the actual game, so you have to pick it up to know what it is if you come across it in a store. With that said, I've never actually played the NES version. I played the heck out of the arcade version back when I first discovered MAME32 in the late 90s though! It's a pretty nice little time killer, and the only thing real strike against it IMO, is that it loops rather than ends after X amount of stages. I really like when games have endings, which is why I don't play that many pre-NES era arcade games.

City Connection has that really Japanese sort of wacky feel to it, and I really appreciate that.

[Niku-Sama]

I agree with that Japanese feel that's for sure.
I like it, that's all i can really say about it other than it reminds me of a side scrolling version of bump n jump.

I didn't like the fact that the one stationary enemy they used was a cat though. I think it should have been old lady's

[celerystalker]

Given your taste in games, we would have probably been friends growing up.

I've had the same impression. Probably would have been good times.

Niku-I'dve been down with the old lady thing. Makes me think of the opening to the old Wayans Brothers TV show. Show was only decent, but the opening ruled.