Ah, the 1980’s. Shouder pads and big hair was in, rock bands like Poison, Motley Crue and Bon Jovi released what would be their biggest selling albums in their careers ( Look What The Cat Dragged In, Dr. Feelgood, Slippery When Wet respectively) and the movie studio’s brought out the big guns in the form of Predator, Die Hard, Back To The Future, Indiana Jones, Return Of The Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back, Rocky, etc.

It was a movie released by Orion Pictures and directed by a then unknown American director called Paul Verhoeventhat that caught the attention of the Manchester games developer and publisher OCEAN.

With its over the top violence, bucket loads of action and black satire RoboCop became a surprise hit when released in 1988 onto the 8-bit format. Ocean released the game to tie-in with the movie coming out on video. The game even had an advert on the title screen in regards to the video release.

The weird thing with this license was that Ocean had sub-licensed the property to DATA EAST, who made Robocop the arcade game. Ocean, seeing that the returns went through the roof with this new side scrolling, violence filled blast-em-up, decided that this was the game to release on the home market, but with a few added extras.

The side scrolling action translated well to the Spectrum accompanied with Ocean’s trademark chunky graphics, rock hard gameplay and music. The levels were identical to that of the arcade game, abeilt with monochrome black and white graphics but still serve the game well.

When you begin level one, Robo doesn’t use his gun, he can only punch. After a few rounds with the local thugs, he brings out his trusty Auto-9 handgun and starts to plough his way through the badguys and the level. As his health deminishes health replenishment can be picked up in the form of BABY FOOD. 

You have an unlimited bullet supply but can pick up other ammo types allong the way like RAPID FIRE and THREE WAY SHOT. As soon as the end of level one is reached, you enter a shooting gallery level, which consists of Robo lining up his sights on a badguy using a woman as a human shield (time it right, you can shoot him in the goolies, like in the film!!!).

The sound was just right, the gameplay was tighter than a snare drum and even the title screens had their own music and digitised speech. Hearing the Spectrum splut out ’RoboCop’ and the Prime Directives was astonishing at the time.

Robocop deserves a VC or LIVE Arcade release as it is one of the best arcade conversions of all time and it would be a ’crime’ for the current gen games players to miss out on such a classic game.

Thank you for your co-operation.....good night.