Elevator Action (Nintendo)

Now I'm sure everyone loves secret agents. What guy doesn't want to be like James Bond? (either one of them.) Here, you're playing a secret agent, Otto, (not the bus driver on The Simpsons) and you must penetrate well guarded security building, and steal some important documents for the goverment. You know, for a couple of years, I thought that the character I was playing was the bad guy, and the guys shooting at you were cops. They certainly do look like police in this game, and here, these are the enemy agents that are scattered throughout each building waiting to turn you into a puddle of blood and guts. Since you're a secret agent, you're armed with a pistol to make quick work of these enemy agents. On top of that, you can jump kick them when you leap into the air in front of them. The whole reason for calling this game Elevator Action is that you're taking several elevators to get to where you're going. There's a few escelators as well, but any more of those, and the game would be called Escelator Action. You wouldn't want this top secret facility to look like a mall now, would you?! Once you recover all
the documents from the rooms marked by a red door, you'll make your way to the ground floor, and hop into your getaway car. That'll take you to the next level, which is another guarded building, just the elevator locations have moved slightly. Ingenius, huh?

Not much on level development, but the game concept works...for about 2 or 3 levels.

After a while, the game may get more difficult, and a bit boring. Just
stealing documents from every building isn't all that thrilling. The only
difference in the levels is where certain elevators moved, and the color of
the level. So one level would be all blue, and the next level would be gray, or purple. Yes! Purple! For the first level or two, crouching on the floor seems to be the best way to avoid getting shot by the enemy. As you move onto the harder levels, the enemy agents will use the same tactic. They'll duck and shoot before you get a chance to. If you don't recover all of the documents when you reach your car in the garage, you'll automatically be taken back up to the red door that you missed. Even if you've only missed one...say on the 18 floor, you gotta go all the way back, get the document, and then, make it back down to your car again. So be sure to open all the red doors. While the enemies can be taken care of with a few well placed jump kicks, and your trusty pistol, another way for them to be wiped out is to shoot the lamps that are located from floor 30 to 16. When you shoot these lamps, the whole building will go dark, and you'll get higher points for shooting these guys in the dark. One other way to get rid of them is to make the elevator crush them. Ooooh!!! Painful! But it works, just be sure you don't get crushed yourself, or fall down the elevator shaft. Patience will pay off. You're not on a time limit. The goverment can wait for these plans anyway.

Ding! You've now reached the review floor. Time for a rating.

Nice opening scene where a rope shoots out from above, and you land right on the roof. It's mysterious, daring, and shows off the capability of
the graphics. It isn't fancy, but it sets a good mood. Every other sprite
featured here is pretty good, but not superb. Your character moves like
he's slipping on a wet floor. The sound fx of gunshots and the hum of the
elevator were cool, but there's the same music on every level. It's like
there's the same elevator music for each building. They really should have added different tunes. As you advance in the game, the enemy agents will become much more difficult to avoid. They'll be more red doors for you to enter, and finding your way to the right elevator is a bit of a chore. When you get passed these faults, you'll see it's not a bad game to play. They just could have made a few modifications when converting it from Arcade game to Home game. Unfortunately, we're 15 years too late.