For one brief beautiful moment, mobsters were all the rage. Brian De Palma's The Untouchables and Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy showed that there was some money to be made off of gangsters getting mowed down in a hail of bullets. Sadly, the era of trenchcoats and tommy guns didn't last. A ridiculous movie about a robot that turns into a puddle made a bazillion dollars and changed everything. On the gaming front, all we got was Dead Connection and- oh wait. Dead Connection rules! Talk about an absolute banger of an arcade shootemup. Taito really outdid themselves with the brilliant set-pieces and intense action.
...Is it too late to change the subject of today's review?
I'm kidding! Kidding...
Dick Tracy on the Genesis is one of those movie-ins that we didn't see enough of back in the day. All too often, I'm forced to set the bar all the way to the ground, settling for any product that's functional. I can't even get annoyed when the developer half-asses a licensed game, because the alternative is zero-ass. Considering that Sega Technical Institute only had 5 months to get something out the door, the fact that they went above and beyond has to be commended. Yeah, I said fact, because nobody else was making a shooter that played like a cross between Crime City and NAM-1975. Taking control of the comic book legend, you'll have to battle crooks attacking from the left, right, and side. Tracy has a pistol to take down anyone who gets in his face or tries to sneak up behind him. More often than not though, there are going to be some goons taking potshots at him from across the street or the other side of a warehouse. Teach them a lesson with a tommy gun.
The one thing you have to keep in mind throughout is that these technicolor criminals are smarter than they look. Sure, you'll always have the shmucks who brought a fist to a gun fight, but most everyone else is packing heat, and they ain't about to play fair. What usually happens is that Tracy will be walking down the street and then (wham!) he's surrounded by goons. They're popping out of doors, stepping out of the shadows, and not a single one of them is waiting for their turn to fire. In other words, every encounter is a dilemma. What's the plan of attack? Who do you target first? How do you avoid their retaliation? You've got a second to come with some answers before a little ketchup gets added to that mustard coat.
You're no doubt familiar with the run & gun genre, but how many walk & guns have you played? Because that's what Dick Tracy is all about. The man knows he can't outrun a bullet and he's not even going to try. He's no sitting duck either, provided you duck or jump whatever's flying his way. Mainly, the inability to run is a safeguard to prevent players from rushing too far ahead and getting overwhelmed. You're obligated to take your time - or at least as much as the time limit will allow - to pick apart the frequent ambushes. This is a methodical shooter that requires reading the enemy and exploiting any openings. If there's a guy with a pistol, then you know he can fire three shots before having to reload. If he crouches while firing, then you have to time your jumps while waiting for opportunities to get closer.
Stages tend to be light on the gimmicks; instead relying on fundamentals and building upon them to create difficulty for the player. As such, the earliest stages serve as an introduction. Familiarize yourself with the mechanics, get attuned to the pros & cons of both weapons, and understand your limitations. Naturally, the later stages feature new enemies and more obstacles. Dilemmas become increasingly prevalent as well. There will be occasions where Tracy has to go without his gun, but the bad guys get to keep theirs. Every situation has to be handled with great care, and you might have to retreat or choose a different approach. The ticking clock adds to the tension, and the absence of health pick-ups ensures that every mistake is costly. It's a lot like an arcade game, except not quite as polished.
If you're looking for something tough that won't think twice about putting the screws on its player, then Dick Tracy is definitely it. This operates on the idea that every step could literally be your last. You could be pursuing someone hiding behind a crate. The instant you leap onto that crate, two more goons will roll in and start shooting. By the way, I got a little "Pro Tip" for you. Get ready to jump bullets anytime you see a guy in tan suit somersault from the foreground. Don't get cute and try to out-shoot him. You'll eat lead every time. Reaching the end and taking down Big Boy is going to require some memorization. Unless you have a sixth sense, you'll inevitably have to fall back on trial & error to get by. I've sometimes mentioned that arcade games have "walls" that only dedicated players can get past. The walls here aren't quite brick, but they're definitely not paper. You'll eventually walk into situations that skirt the line between "This is a serious challenge!" and "Now that's just cheap."
One nuisance that comes to mind is the boss-fight with Flattop. I didn't mention it before, but the boss-fights in this game are pretty clever. They remind me a bit of Time Crisis in that Dick pursues the villain through the stage, dealing damage to them while eliminating any allies that pop in. These especially bad guys usually have some alternative weaponry like molotovs or explosives. Flattop prefers to keep it simple with his tommy gun. At the end of his stage, the lights go out and you can only see him when he's shooting. Maybe there's a tell that I haven't noticed, but this just felt like a fight that requires a little luck to survive. He pales in comparison to Big Boy, an already tough fight that's made ridiculous by the strict time limit. For reasons that can only be described with expletives, the last couple of bosses get a big defense buff for their final phase. I hate it.
While I applaud STI* for developing a competent game with creative ideas in a comically short amount of time, I also think that it could've used at least another month of tweaks. Yeah, I know that's a huge ask given what they had to work with, but the difficulty really does go too far in a few places. Having a final stage that spawns a small army every time Tracy takes a step might work on the Hard or even Normal difficulty setting, but everything I described up to now was on Easy. The credits didn't mention any testers, which leads me to assume the programmers just pulled double duty. Creating a fair challenge often requires a person who doesn't already know the game inside and out. Still, what the developers accomplished here is quite interesting. Time just wasn't on their side. Give it a try sometime. Experience the grueling Stage 6-B for yourself.
*Talk about an unfortunate acronym.
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