Game Review: City Fighter (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

City Fighter has an interesting history – not only was it released with the same catalogue number as Mind Control, but looking through the game’s code shows something else – it was planned to be released with the name War of the Worlds.  Naturally of course obtaining a licence for that may have proved difficult, and expensive.  The game does give you the blurb about saving Central London, as an Earth Defence Gunner.  You have two nuclear powered guns, with the generators between St Paul’s and the Houses of Parliament.  If those generators are hit, the city will be destroyed.

We Built This City

The game loading screen shows an alien craft swooping over the River Thames, and as the game then loads, the City Fighter game logo, in a mess of a yellow and orange sprite, scrolls up the screen to the top, with a scrolling message detailing more of the plot and some instructions.  Unless you refer to the manual, you will not know that pressing D brings up a demonstration mode for the game, and S starts the game – with the option to select 1 or 2 for the joystick port of choice as well as the keyboard.  Why not just have pressing fire to start the game, instead of more sloppy presentation?

Suffragette City

Once you start the game, an air raid siren sounds for a few seconds, and you cannot start shooting until that siren stops – an option to press fire may have been useful.  Once the level starts, you will see that your crosshair moves left, right, up, and down, and you can then target the aliens within your crosshair and shoot them – with a reasonable visual effect as you shoot.   The first level has all the same aliens, which if you hit them dead on are killed, but a shot to their outer means they head falling to the ground.

Streets of London

As you progress left and right, you can spot several landmarks of Central London within the playing area, with you not being able to move left and right of the extremities – a wraparound feature could have been an option to add.   The landmarks are all in grey, white, and black, but you should be able to spot the BT Tower, St Paul’s Cathedral, Marble Arch, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and, oddly, Battersea Power Station, which would make no sense given the extremities of what the instructions define as the gameplay area.  It is at least nice to see them panoramic and reminds me of the Thames Television opening titles.

City of Warfare

You shoot down the aliens, with the satisfaction of hitting them dead on being quite good.  You need to shoot a certain number per level to progress, with a bonus being awarded at the end of the level.  If any alien shoots back at your defences, the shot is often an orange bullet that gets larger as it comes towards you, and you need to avoid this to avoid instant death.  If you do get hit, the screen and border colours flash rapidly with an explosion sound, and that is effectively game over.  You can move to avoid the bullet hitting your central position, so keeping on the move always can prove very useful.

In The City, There’s a Thousand Things I Wanna Say To You

As you progress in later levels, you come across different aliens being introduced, with what looks very X-Fighter inspired alien craft in level two, and more of a large flying saucer (and some poorly defined colours) in level three.  That does at least give some variety to the game and means that the high score challenge is worth doing.  It does suffer a little from the play area being a little too small when scrolling left or right, meaning if a bullet comes at you close to the extremities you really do need to move very quickly or face instant death.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in City Fighter are average at best.  The landmarks of Central London are at least recognisable to a degree, but all that grey and white makes it look somewhat dull and almost like a black and white film era.  The aliens do at least have some animation, and a nice effect when your weapon is fired.  The sound just has an awful siren noise which you must endure, and basic white noise shooting effects for the most part.  It is functional, but you can tell that a tune might have souped the presentation up a bit.

Final Thoughts

City Fighter is not a disaster, by no means, and for a quick blast it may be good fun to try and at least get the high score by getting through waves of enemies.  However, the narrow playing area and the fact that some of those orange bullets are hard to dodge can sometimes mean you are trapped in a corner and almost resigned to it being game over.  It does at least have a good level of playability, and the extra aliens in later levels do give you a good high score challenge to aim at.  Whilst not an awful game, it shows that with more polish it could have been a lot better.

* * *

You know what we think but why not share your thoughts on this game! Let us know what you think of it in the comments below, or add your own score using the slider in the summary box at the top of the review!

Please follow and like us: