Games of the Abstract: Undercover Cops (1992)

 

Developer: Irem Corp.

Publisher: Irem Corp.

One to Three Players

Arcade

 

It can be easy to view all a genre as similar, which alongside the gameplay idiosyncrasies makes their personalities very important. Quickly establishing the context in a pre-start screen cut screen before you put the first coin in, this is a rundown futuristic world of 2043 A.D. where, in a metropolis between Robocop's Detroit and Judge Dredd, a secret cabal set up the "City Sweepers" to combat the criminal underworld, including a figure named Dr. Crayborn, using a trio of figures on the wrong side of the law but heroic and fighting for good. It proves a wise choice as, even in the tone and shading of the colours used in the sprites, Irem's Undercover Cops is gritty, like a Saturday morning American cartoon is there is a little edge and an unnerving amount of skeletons of victim laying about throughout the levels.

Right down to the dark shading, this grimy future world needed heroes to face the punks, lunatics and even invading mole men running rough shot here. One is Claude, a former martial arts champion who accidentally killed a man protecting his girlfriend; Bubba, an American football player who was ran out the sport by its corrupt underbelly on false accusations, and Flame, a young female vigilante whose revenge plot, with her lover and male partner in justice killed, is vastly contrasted by her "cute" appearance and how one of her moves running is a diving "thump", using pro wrestling terminology for an attack where you hit a person with your backside first into the face. (In mind that this is not factually checked fully, there is a far more interesting detail, in mind this was translated in its Western release, that she might have originally been called Rosa, and was both British and a former model^1,2). Everything in the world, where these three are to clear out the scum and villainy, is detailed and dingy, contrasting a cheesy tone, where each level clearance (including slot machines) has snapshots of the criminals apprehended battered, against the first level on a rundown city beach. There is junk everywhere and, when you scatter flocks of crows away, they have been swarming bodies stripped to bones, and as mentioned, there will be a literal pit underground of skeletons like a mass grave, so this is becomes a curious mixture of exaggerated pulp action with a slither of luridness. This goes as far as the one female enemy you find, as this duplicates grunts in different colours, barely wearing anything to how it is possible to chuck people (or fall out) the plane in the final stage of the final level with disregard of a criminal's rights.

It will become more cartoonish once the mole people come in, but it also feels like the full extension of all the Japanese videogames obsessed with apocalyptic cities and hoodlums as a result of American pop culture, be it mohawks, motorcycle rider hoodlums, and a first boss, a Terminator-like robot, who has a crusher on the right of the screen which enemies can fall under for one hit kills, but even you can (as happened to me) as his grapple involves grabbing you with his extending robot arm and chucking you in. The game does not reinvent the wheel for the genre, but everything is solid, if with some stiff opponents. Any of the taller ones with baseball bats, who will just knock you out of the air in diving attacks, and any ganging up is to be considered, as this does not follow any touches very different from the template of the time, from the crowd clearing move that takes some health to the one button for an attack in the first place, only is aesthetic touches that, as this is the future, burgers can still be found in strange places but apparent overlarge snails, mice and live frogs are a sustainable food source everyone in the City Sweepers enjoys. One of the most idiosyncratic and a cool touch, among all you can chuck and hit people with, is that here you may need to occasionally pull girders and pillars out of the ground in button bashing before using them as weapons, which will leave you vulnerable but is a distinct touch I have not seen in many other games worth taking, especially as the weapons are good crowd control.

Irem would go onto the likes of Ninja Baseball Bat Man (1993), but a distinct thing to point out, and can be seen in the art style here, and its mix of the goofy and the macabre, is knowledge members of Irem who worked on this would go onto form Nazca, the creators of the Metal Slug series, legendary in another genre for the arcades². The difficulty of the game is something to bare in mind with Undercover Cops, but beyond this, it has aged well as a distinct game oozing style, the one aging detail being one of the bosses being called the un-PC Fatso, something likely to blame on the Western translation in its renaming. Considering she is It has also aged well, barring one of the bosses being called the un-PC Fatso, but as a large woman with a clown on her chest, who cries when hit down before whacking you, and has a giant jackhammer that, when not hitting you, drives it down into the ground to cause motorbikes to fall from above that explode on ground impact, she is still a cool boss with just an unfortunate name. She and a man with a DEVO-like cone hat who, in the edginess of the game, accidentally is burnt alive, forcing you to bring in a charred skeleton to justice, is just among the many idiosyncratic figures onscreen you will encounter.

The Mole People, both among the most annoying and strangest of the cast, from their introduction in Level 3, show the eccentricities that Metal Slug would get up to. If their mention over multiple times may seem odd, I have always found mole people amusing as a concept. Not the same as the term "mole people", which is a grim term used for the homeless living in underground areas, the concept of subterranean mole people is more so for me as, barring The Mole People (1956) and Superman and the Mole Men (1951), the only other way I may have likely learnt of this pulp trope is the Sam & Max videogame franchise, who naturally embraced this niche piece of Americana, stranger knowing I had never seen either film before I gained an amusement of the notion of a mole man. And they are mole people in this game, as actual moles in Level 3 swarm about and occasionally attack. These enemies prove the biggest pain in the backside throughout, if admitting they are still distinct characters, pushing the game for its few lurid aspects into pure comic pulp, especially when the final boss is a mad scientist, wishing to drop a nuclear bomb on the city, who transforms himself into a monster to face you. Considering this is how, in the same year, Capcom ends their Cadillacs and Dinosaur beat-em-up game, with a same final boss type, feels less like an unoriginal idea but drinking from the same water of pop cultural tropes.

The game, unlike other beat-em-ups I have covered, got a SNES conversion, and it was released in 1995, if with some significant compromises. This also got a game called Undercover Cops: Hakaishin Garumaa, a turn-based board/card game hybrid spinoff game for the original Nintendo Game Boy in 1993, which has to be a first for me in terms of beat-em-ups which, as this one still did, sadly never got the original arcade versions released onto the consoles decades after. Barring a SNES port in this case, Undercover Cops, whilst not the best of the genre, is a casualty of this lack of preservation. Even in terms of its slight plot, promising in its post-credits coda a potential sequel, which sadly did not happen, there was a lot more that could have been done with this, only with the good caveat that Irem continued with this genre, and that we eventually got Nazca from Irem members, which with their relationship with SNK proved very fruitful in gaming history.

 

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1) Mobygames' entry for Undercover Cops.

2) Hardcore Gaming 101's article on Undercover Cops, written by "Bobinator" and published on April 27th 2020.