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1987 · NES
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Spy Hunter is a top-down driving game where you're the spy. You drive the G-6155 Interceptor, an armed sports car, up a scrolling road, shooting enemy cars and trying not to hit the civilians. You can force enemies off the road too. A helicopter drops bombs from above, and the craters they leave can wreck you.
A weapons van turns up in each new stretch of road, and you can call it back when its light flashes. Drive into the back of it and you come out with oil slicks, smoke screens or missiles, until you lose the car and lose the lot. Drive through a boathouse and the car becomes a speedboat, where the oil slick turns into a flamethrower. Where the road forks you can head into new terrain and weather. At the start you get as many cars as you need; after that you earn them with points. There's no ending. You keep going until you run out of cars.
Midway's arcade game came out in 1983. George Gomez designed it with Tom Leon, his partner on Tron, and the idea came from listening to a cassette of James Bond music. Gomez drew the whole road map on a long scroll of drawing paper, and the weapons van was his idea too. It was meant to be a Bond game, but the licence couldn't be had, so the music became an electronic arrangement of Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme. It was one of the five highest-grossing arcade games in the US in 1984.
Sunsoft ported it to the NES, released in North America in September 1987. The arcade cabinet had a yoke, a pedal and a gearshift, so a d-pad version was always going to be a different thing. Sunsoft later made a sequel-ish game in Japan called Battle Formula, which came out in North America as Super Spy Hunter.
It still drives well. The road scrolls, the enemies come at you, and you feel clever when a smoke screen sends a pursuer into the scenery. The tension of a civilian car appearing just as you fire is a good one.
It's an arcade score chaser, and that's all it is. If you want levels, bosses or an ending, look elsewhere. If you want ten minutes of tidy driving and shooting, it's still a good time.
Camus wrote that 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' Spy Hunter has no ending, so every run is a boulder pushed up a road until it rolls back. The game never tells you that you've won. Even your gadgets go when the car does.
And yet you drive. The point of the run isn't an ending. It's the next fork in the road, the next van, the next close call with a civilian you just managed not to hit. A game that can't be finished asks a nice question: if there's no last level, what are you actually playing for?
Read: One must imagine Mario happy →
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
In the game. Enemy cars and civilian cars share the road. Shoot a civilian and your score counter stops ticking for a while, so you learn to read the traffic before you pull the trigger.
Do it on purpose. For one run, name every car out loud as it appears, 'enemy' or 'civvie', before you fire. Count how often you were wrong.
Off the couch. Spotting the dodgy email before you click, or the mate-of-a-mate who's charming and full of it. Read first, react second.
In the game. Your gadgets vanish the moment you lose the car, so every missile you hoard is a missile you might never fire. Spend them now, or save them for a helicopter that may never come?
Do it on purpose. Play one run where you use every special weapon as soon as you get it, and one where you hoard. Compare the scores.
Off the couch. Saving the good bottle for an occasion that never arrives. Sometimes the right call is to use the nice thing now.
In the game. At first the cars are free and endless. After that, every new car has to be earned with points, and a crash means starting again without your gadgets.
Do it on purpose. Next time you lose your weapons, don't restart. Drive clean, earn the van back and see how far you get.
Off the couch. Losing your gear, your job or your plans and having to rebuild from the basics. Clean, steady driving gets you back to the van.
Verdict · 7/10
A neat bit of arcade driving with no end in sight. Short sessions suit it.
