STORY / GAMEPLAY Nuke, the newly designed drug hits the streets of Detroit and Robocop must put an end to this. The best way to do it is to raid all the safe-houses and factories that produce and supply the market with Nukes and shoot everyone except of their bosses in charge. Your orders are to arrest those guys alive! Additionally, you must destroy any Nuke found in your way.
Robocop is called to navigate through a set of platform environments killing, arresting and collecting drugs. You can arrest gangsters by punching them until they fall down and you can use your almighty 1000-bullets automatic pistol to take down the rest of the villains. You should arrest enough people otherwise the gameplay will change in a first person shooter perspective (!). Apart from the attacking villains or the snipers popping out from windows, Robocop must watch for deadly gaps or water pits which will instantly terminate him. Most of the times, your desperate attempts to safely maneuver "Robo" to the next platform, will eventually crush him down. In the "frustration" section, there are very hard bosses, as well as some ability-testing levels. The overall gameplay is rather tough and Robocop's awkward inertia makes him almost uncontrollable, especially when he lands or performs a jump just before or after a deadly gap. He seems to “slide” a lot and often plummets over the edge of a platform leading to certain death. Smooth and precise movement is required and it takes some time to master the awkward controls that sometimes respond in a very slow manner. OK, though the game is hard to play, it’s also pretty addictive and there are plenty of neat touches to keep you in, plus some loads of secret screens to discover.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The CPC Plus (and GX4000) versions are technically superior to any other 8bit and pretty much close to the Atari ST! The sharpness of the Robocop loading screen image is way impressive and I thought that I was looking at a 16bit version (Amiga, ST) screen. The in-game visuals are colorful, detailed, with so much action going on. There are moving saws, electric discharges, barrels rolling and spikes slamming down all over the place, all well drawn and smoothly animated. The sound features a nice in-game music but unfortunately no sound effects (!) The intro music is taken from the movie. In this particular game it is clear that the CPC+ hardware is being used to its full potential, which is not so common with the machine's other titles.