Game 419: City Connection

Here's a bit of personal trivia - the Nintendo version of City Connection was the first video game I ever rented! I can remember the 8-bit chiptune rendition of Der Flohwalzer as if I heard it yesterday, even though I haven't since the first and only time I rented it nearly 35 years ago. But today I'm sticking with the arcade original.

 

You play a blue-haired teen "Clarice," shown beaming a ^_^💗v expression between rounds, taking her Honda City subcompact out for a joy ride on the highways of the world. You have to paint every inch of the highways while avoiding cops, cats, and occasionally road spikes, and I do mean every inch. The edges of each platform quickly prove bothersome, as the only way to reliably edge is to drive off and fall or to have incredibly good timing jumping or reversing direction on the very last pixel where this is possible. Usually I'd just drive off, but opportunities to get back to the upper lanes can be sparse, especially after the first round.

Even though Clarice is a vandal, a reckless driver, underage, and possibly on multiple controlled substances, the cops aren't actively trying to get you - they mainly just drive in a straight line and tend to congregate on the stage floor, where they are easily shaken by reversing direction. What makes them dangerous is that nearly everything you do is a momentum commitment - jump and you can't change your trajectory until you land, not even if your trajectory sends you sailing right into an obstacle coming from off-screen. Reverse direction and Clarice pops a wheelie, which you can't jump or reverse out of until the front wheels are touching tarmac again. Pretty much the only thing you can do without commitment is throwing cans of oil, which send whatever they hit into a spinout which you can then ram off the road for points. Sometimes this is the only way you can survive a jump or drop that would otherwise launch you into a car, but trailing behind and slicking rows of them and causing big pileups by ramming one spunout car into another is by far the best way to score points. And later stages replace the cop cars with ambulances and taxis that are worth even more points to wreck. Who's the real bad guy here, Clarice?

I played for a good couple of hours, but I never found a good strategy that ensured survival in the second stage and beyond. In fact, I couldn't beat the third stage, though I think I did get a respectable score just from playing the first two.

It's hard to think of more to say about the game. The visuals and animation are fairly decent for the time, with colorful scrolling backdrops depicting the city you're in. The FM-style music isn't half bad, though the sound effects aren't half good. Hitting a cat on the road triggers this hilarious scene where the cat slooowly flies off into the sky to Ferdinand Loh's Flea Waltz ("I Stepped on the Cat" in Japan), and I can't even be mad about losing a life. Yeah, I'm done here.

GAB rating: Average. City Connection looks nice enough and offers a somewhat novel gameplay concept that isn't quite like anything before it, but the only challenge here comes from rigid controls that don't feel substantial enough to be worth the effort to master.