Crack Down review - Sega Megadrive

Crack Down was a fun coin-op to play, and more than reminiscent of the Gauntlet series. The Megadrive version retains almost all of the arcade's playability, but with slightly smaller graphics - hardly surprising, considering the size of the coin-op's screen! The sound is good, and fits the bill nicely - lots of explosions and the like. If you enjoyed the coin-op, you'll certainly enjoy this, so go forth now and purchase it pronto.

I enjoyed playing this great arcade conversion - it features a tense and exciting atmosphere as you sneak around the levels planting bombs and avoiding baddies. The graphics are small, but perfectly formed, and the sound and presentation are reminiscent of the coin-op original. The only thing that disappointed me was that the game slows down when two players are participating simultaneously - a bit annoying, since this IS supposed to be a two-player game! Still, this doesn't ruin the enjoyment too much, and the game is well speedy with one player, which is the way most gamers will play it anyway.

This was one of the first games that I purchased for my beloved Megadrive and from the moment the digitised voice of the title screen ("Quack-down") came on, I knew that I was in for a laugh.

Although I have not played the arcade version (and hence cannot mark it based on conversion), I found that the attention to detail was quite impressive and hasn't aged that badly. As the levels were quite imaginative with pretty decent AI, there was a pretty decent incentive to keep playing just to discover what baddies and pit-of-death was waiting for Ben and Andy (or whatever the main character's names were).

The sound effects was outstandingly funny from the "oooohh" when being shot (and then proceeding to curl up like a ball) to the "arrrhhhh" when falling own a bottomless pit. In fact my twisted sense of humour always drove Ben into whatever pits or electric fields there was just to see how he would die (although why he would STILL curl up like a ball and turn grey just after being blasted from a flame thrower is beyond me).

MM review quite rightly pointed out that this is really a two player affair as on one player mode, the screen exposure was exactly the same as that of two-player (which I never understood as the dormant ½ of the screen contained information about the enemies and how to beat them (duuurrr)). It's just a shame that this reduced its difficulty somewhat - being told in advance what you are expecting somehow killed the suspense that would otherwise be in a two player mode. Another downer was the gift of being temporarily invincible after being killed and this just meant you can get up and walk through to the end of level. The lives and points available were very generous and this ultimately meant that seeing the ending screen was never in any doubt but despite all that I still found myself coming back to this again and again - perhaps for the laugh of the sound effects.

Despite the setbacks, this is still a game I look back to with very fond memories just because it's something I believe that Sega or anyone else does not make anymore. As this was a pure arcade conversion, it was clearly something which was ported over to the MD to get the numbers up and there was never any doubt that the series was not going to be continued. To be honest, looking back there is little that could be added (except for new baddies and traps) although the likes of Smash TV and Total Carnage did continue that genre somewhat (and for the record, I did not enjoy playing them).

Overall, I would recommend this game for a quick blast and if Sega would be good enough to put this as part of a compilation on a handheld that would be great .

- Jim Wai