Arcade Game Review : Mad Motor (Mitchell, 1989)

Mad Motor
Published by : Mitchell (1989)
Re-releases : None at present

Mad Motor is a crazy low-budget game from Mitchell. I think it was inspired by the movie Akira, in combination with some pretty hard drugs.

You play as these two biker guys who ride through some city, using what are either tonfas or walkers to fight some road gang (as well as assaulting random pickup trucks and other motorists unfortunate enough to cross their path). The real treat of the game comes when your character runs out of life, at which point he randomly transforms into some sort of pig-demon riding a hog with tank treads. You stay in this mode until you take a few more hits, at which point you die and have to insert another quarter.

The gameplay is pretty craptacular. The collision detection is very loose, and it's hard to tell both when you are being hit, and when you have actually landed a hit on a foe. The game is also highly repetitive, sending out the same enemies over and over, has boring graphics and tinny irritating music. The only real point to playing this is to laugh at the crazy demon transformations ("I'm alive! FULL POWER!") as well as the bizarre cut scenes between levels where you usually get some hilariously Engrishy message ("Tora Tora Tora! Try jummping!")