This Week in Retro: ESWAT [1990] (Patreon)

June 1 1990: Sega's 16-Bit Cyber Police Outrank Their Arcade Brethren

by Diamond Feit

Excuse me, dear reader, do you have a moment to talk about Robocop? The ultra-violent, ultra-satirical 1987 film about a police officer who is killed on the job only to be reborn as a cyborg programmed to "serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and obey the law?" Robocop wasn't merely a hit at the box office. The movie did well, but more than that, Robocop as a character became a cultural icon targeted at kids, despite (or perhaps because of, in a small way?) his film of origin being adult in nature. Regardless, he quickly migrated from the silver screen to toys and cartoons and, naturally, video games. And while there were certainly Robocop video games, there were also not-Robocop video games that owe a piece of their existence to Robocop.

In 1989, Sega released Cyber Police ESWAT in arcades, a not-Robocop video game about a police officer who wears a robot-like battle suit to fight crime. A side-scrolling action game in the vein of Shinobi, ESWAT saw players walk to the right, jumping to reach platforms or background layers, and shooting generic mooks in the street. It's less exciting than Shinobi, because cops are not as cool as ninjas, but after three levels of playing as an ordinary cop the hero upgrades to his robo-form* and the rest of the game is more appealing. Harder, too: much as the Avengers's strength invited challenge, a police officer wearing a mech-suit emboldens his digital opponents to swarm him with assault rifles and mech suits of their own.

Cyber Police ESWAT is a good arcade game for its era: The characters are big and expressive, and two players can fight crime together—something Shinobi didn't allow. It saw an array of ports to various home computers as well as the Sega Master System, a late release for that system given that the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive was already widely available. All of these ports are compromised in one area or another; in some cases, they're rendered completely unplayable or unrecognizable. But when Sega brought ESWAT to their 16-bit platform, it was transformed from a quarter-munching sidescroller to a slightly more strategic action game, and made all the better for it.

ESWAT: City Under Siege, as it was titled outside Japan, contains the same basic elements as the arcade original, but it's a distinct game rather than a port. It drops the two-player option and uses smaller sprites than its predecessor but nearly every other element of the game is improved. Most significantly, it gets to the good stuff faster, as players only have to fight through two stages in suitless form before unlocking the robo-powers. I remember playing in the arcades and feeling a sense of urgency to put in more coins to make sure I could clear the intro stages. As a player at home, I already knew what I was signed up for, so I just wanted to cut to the chase sooner.

Arcade ESWAT is a game of limitations, as all weapons require ammo pickups or are finite-use power-ups, and a timer ticks down to place false urgency on the player to keep moving. Genesis ESWAT drops all restrictions and makes weapon pickups semi-permanent, lasting until a player loses a life. With skill, a player could have a full repertoire of five different guns to choose from in later stages. Even better, the mech-suit is now a defensive upgrade, which was not the case in the arcades. After all, if you're going to make a video game about a robot-suit-wearing cop, he should take more than three hits before dying.

As long as we're talking about leaving limitations behind, ESWAT: City Under Siege throws conventional platforming limitations out the window by giving your robo-suit a jetpack, a concept the arcade game never offered. It has a fuel meter that only allows for a few seconds of uninterrupted flight, but a simple tap and hold of the jump button in mid-air lets you hover in place for much less gas. The flames of the jetpack double as a weapon unto themselves, and a screen-clearing attack is available at the cost of emptying your entire tank. These movement and strategic options add a lot of depth to City Under Siege that the arcade game never provides, including an entire stage designed around precision flying which ends in a special infinite-fuel battle against a flying boss robot. I should add that ESWAT's jetpack precedes Robocop 3 by three full years (a terrible, kid-friendly film where Robocop gets a jetpack of his own). Sega does what Orion Pictures never should've done.

Genesis ESWAT is a graphical downgrade from the arcade version (a technological inevitability of the era), but the levels offer a greater variety of locations, which makes it more visually interesting. The arcade original largely consists of city-based action, either on the streets or on rooftops. In City Under Siege, that's limited to the very first stage, moving the action to a sci-fi prison in the second level and later visiting factories, laboratories, and of course the sewers. ESWAT doesn't include an explicit narrative in either version—there are no cutscenes, no conversations, and hardly any text until the ending—but at least in the Genesis version the distinct missions and set pieces give the player a sense that they took a journey and fought a long fight.

Parallel to that point, the final conflicts in each version shape the experience very differently. The arcade game ends in a supervillain lair that wouldn't look out of place in a James Bond film (or Michael Jackson's Moonwalker), and the last boss is... a fat guy in a chair. It's a left-field ending that doesn't lend itself to a story other than "bad guy dead." In City Under Siege, the last boss is wearing a suit just like yours, and you battle in a room full of identical suits. In a semi-scripted sequence, the fight ends with both of you removing your suits and fighting face-to-face. The villain turns out to be an android, which I cannot explain, but at least the setting and nature of the climax suggests a larger narrative. Were you two friends? Former colleagues? Did he steal his tech from the cops, or did the cops steal it from him? It was an ending I thought a lot about as a kid.

Unlike a lot of Sega properties from this era, ESWAT seems to have vanished from the company's radar. The arcade original is all but forgotten when compared to contemporary hits like Shinobi or Altered Beast. City Under Siege fares a bit better, having been released for Wii Virtual Console and included in the company's recent Genesis/Mega Drive collections on PC and consoles, but it failed to make the cut for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Mini. For me, ESWAT: City Under Siege stood tall as a reinterpretation of an arcade game that made the most of its hardware restraints, perhaps not quite reaching the heights of Ninja Gaiden or Bionic Commando, but working out much better than the well-remembered NES interpretations of Double Dragon or Strider. It gives players more to do as they play and, while easier than the arcade game, remains challenging regardless.

Playing ESWAT in 2020 presents a new wrinkle though: The real-life militarization of the police in America makes its knock-off Robocop premise a lot less fun. The arcade version has mostly human enemies with the occasional giant animal, which you notably kill rather than subdue. City Under Siege is more sci-fi with its setting and foes, but you're still shooting your way through a lot of people to get to the big bots at the end of each level. Also no fun: the mech-suit's official name is "Individual Combat Equipment" or—ugh—I.C.E. for short. Sorry, ESWAT, we definitely do not need a gritty reboot for you.

(Full disclosure: I began writing this column one day before George Floyd was murdered and submitted a "finished" version in advance of the now-international demonstrations against police violence. At the time, I worried that this snappy ending would be viewed as "too political" for Retronauts. Two weeks later I see that it wasn't political enough. Black Lives Matter; defund the police.)