Every week me and my amazing friend Alma go on Arcade Adventures, trying out some classic (and not so classic) arcade games and giving our verdicts. The whole playthrough will be uploaded to YouTube so you can see how we did!
This time we checked out Irem’s 1992 beat ’em up Undercover Cops. This one was also ported to the SNES, but only in Japan, so we tried the arcade original in English… which we later found out was probably not the right move! You can see our playthrough on YouTube below:
Amy’s Verdict
Undercover Cops is a standard side-scrolling beat ’em up, and it’s very clearly influenced by Final Fight and Streets of Rage 2. It’s got very similar mechanics, with combat based around a mix of normal punches and kicks, and grapples and throws that are important for crowd control. There’s the usual desperation move too, which drains some health but cuts through enemies around you. Although it’s very satisfying to see moves land and enemies go flying, I found the inputs a little stiff; it was hard to get the timing right, and easy to leave myself open by whiffing a move that I thought would connect but came out just a bit too late. It made it feel like I had to be very deliberate with my moves and couldn’t quickly adapt to incoming enemies.
The graphical style and setting are very reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic landscapes of Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken); the boss characters especially seem to belong in that kind of grimy, junkyard-scavenger world. It’s a little odd as the game never talks about such a disaster, but apparently this is what New York will look like in 2045! There are girders and concrete posts lying around everywhere, but they have to be pulled out of the ground first before you can use them as weapons - which again leaves you open to attack, but this lends a bit of strategy to it, encouraging you to time it so you’re not interrupted.
As an arcade game it’s not too hungry for your coins: enemies have well-telegraphed moves with patterns that can be learned, and only the bosses seem to have extra “cheating” behaviour, like one boss that obviously reads your inputs so that he can counter-attack you perfectly. While it’s a good length and doesn’t feel like a slog, it could have benefitted from more variety in enemy types; the last level in particular throws dozens of the same five or six basic enemy types at you.
Overall, I had fun with this one. The main problem is that it doesn’t do anything better than its contemporaries like Final Fight, so the only selling point is its characters and setting. Still, it provides a solid hour or so of brutal beat ’em up action.
Version Difference
As I mentioned before, we played the English version, which (rather uncommonly) came out before the Japanese version. This meant that Irem were able to add more moves and features to that version - a rare case of the “original” version being the wrong one to go for! It included wake-up attacks, extra desperation moves and different throws, plus more voice samples and better instruments in the soundtrack. The SNES version would retain all of the Japanese features, and a later arcade release called the “Renewal Version” added the extra moves to the English version.
Alma’s Verdict
You can read Alma’s entire review of Undercover Cops on her blog - here’s some highlights!
To quote Amy about this: It's like they tried to make a Streets of Rage game but inspired by Fist of the North Star, and I have to fully agree on this. It's super gritty and weird in just the right places, like how some of the bosses are complete freaks. I like it and it fits its theme perfectly."
Screenshots
