Street Cop (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
112A playthrough of Bandai's 1989 NES game, Street Cop.
Recording this video was quite the adventure. I have the cart and a Power Pad (it was still new in the box until just a couple of weeks ago: it still has that weird pool-toy smell to it!), but after plugging in everything and playing for a ridiculous amount of time, I came to the realization that I'm not six anymore, and resultantly I seem to have lost the ability to do the World Class Track Meet "cheetah" speed trick of bracing against the kitchen counter to flat out sprint for minutes at a time on a piece of vinyl that likes to slip all over the floor.
So, that being said, and emulator seemed the right way to go since it can pause the game whenever, and with it pause the video recording, so I took a bit of a break between the later stages to recoup. I couldn't get the PowerPad to play nicely with Windows with my NES controller adapter, so I got creative and put two PS1 DDR dance pads on a DualShock 2 USB controller adapter with two ports (DDR only had 3x3 pads - the PowerPad was 4x4), and FCEUX thankfully played nicely with them, so I could assign each button from the PowerPad to the corresponding spots on the PS1 dance mats. I sat two DDR mats side-by-side, and in FCEUX's PowerPad configuration panel I mapped the the buttons in a way that pretty closely mimicked the layout of the original PowerPad - and hey, the technology is pretty similar in the two mats, and they're all vinyl, so it was a pretty authentic experience. If you have wanted to challenge any of the old PowerPad games and find yourself without an NES and PP but for some reason have 15-year-old DDR controllers in the closet, there's your cheap workaround!
The lengths I went to to set it up in order to compensate for what aging 25 years has done for my lung capacity and energy level aside, this is a really novel way to use the pad. I really liked the amount of innovation apparent here - it's just as good of an original use of the new controller as all of the other Family Trainer titles were. While the controls aren't particularly ideal - it's actually pretty counter-intuitive, but it makes sense after awhile. It's also MUCH less frustrating when you have a controller in-hand while giving yourself a hernia or a coronary during your mad dash. The game allows some of the controls to be done via the gamepad instead of stepping awkwardly on a bubble that's never really in a convenient place to use. It makes a huge difference.
Oh, random trivia: this was developed by Human - those guys that did Clock Tower. They also did Dance Aerobics, Athletic World, AND World Class Track Meet (or Stadium Events, if you prefer the luxury option), and Super Team Games. Whoda thunk it?
The US cart label and box also have some of the most horrendously suggestive art I've seen on NES games. Seriously - he rides on a giant badge star that reflects his crotch while going "up, up, and away!" with his billy club held in such a way that I'm reminded of the dueling banjos from Deliverance. What a magical time the 1980s were.
No cheats were used during the recording of this video. However, it wasn't played with the original hardware as intended, as explained above, though I do think I approximated it well enough to legitimize the playthrough.
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