Elevator Action is a classic 1983 arcade game from Taito that showed up right at the dawn of the great arcade crash, which pretty much decimated the industry from over-population. This has made Elevator Action one of the more obscure classics of the era. Since that day, it hasn’t seen a whole lot of ports or re-releases on other platforms outside of an appearance on the NES, Game Boy Color, and being buried in various Taito Legends collections. Finally Elevator Action gets a chance to show it’s merits to the current generation of gamers and nostalgic players that remember it fondly. Does it hold up?
Game: Elevator Action Deluxe
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Taito
Genre: Arcade Stealth
Price: $9.95
Pros: Pretty straight remake/tribute to an overlooked classic.
Cons: New gameplay elements wreck havoc with the original formula
Verdict: Possibly entertaining for fans of the original, but not much value past that.
Acquired via Publisher
Elevator Action doesn’t have the largest nostalgia wave behind it to say the least, so it has to largely be judged on the merits of its gameplay alone. Fortunately, the original core gameplay for Elevator Action is very solid. Your spy (Agent 17, codename: “Otto”), must acquire a series of “secret documents” from various tall skyscrapers using a series of elevators (duh) and escalators. Each building is filled with doors. You can duck into these doors to hide from enemy agents, but they become locked as soon as you step out. Single use only, folks! These “documents” are hidden behind the doors specifically colored red. Once you’ve nabbed the papers, you must escape to the bottom floor and jump into your getaway car.
Elevator Action is basically just good old fashioned traditional arcade gameplay. As you start with the tutorial levels, you begin to see the joys of the original game. The joy of the original gameplay is that each skyscraper is essentially a maze. Your defense mechanisms are limited, so you must largely rely on stealth to make your escape. You can punch a spy to quietly take him down, but using a gun is a risk because it alerts others to your location. It’s very simple, but that give and take gives the game an element of tension. Elevator Action Deluxe could have easily relied on that classic design and simply expanded it endlessly thanks to the fact that the game is no longer restricted to single-screen gameplay and ancient arcade hardware (and to the game’s credit, it largely does this). However, once the game starts to toss on those “Deluxe” elements, much of the original formula gets muddled in unnecessary upgrades that wreck the balance of the original design.
The problems persist. The original Elevator Action did not have a timer (rare for a coin operated arcade machine), though there was a sense of urgency. If you lagged about, the music would increase in tempo, enemy spies could become far more hostile, and your control of the elevators would become sporadic, often making escape near the bottom floor near impossible. Elevator Action Deluxe simply adds a timer and calls it a day. Worse is the sloppy game design later in the game. Often you’ll find yourself with barren floors lacking any doors where you’ll simply have to detonate an explosive to clear the obstacles, die from the splash damage, then re-spawn and run the empty hallway. That’s just cheap game design, and it wreaks havoc on a classic formula. Since when did Elevator Action need mines, ziplines, rocket launchers, and invincible robots to be fun? The fact that the development team actually experimented (and later abandoned) with a first-person viewpoint for sections of the game shows the level of disconnect with the original source material).
It’s not all bad. Some levels are better than others, but you shouldn’t have to sit through shoddily constructed segments to find the joy of the original Elevator Action buried deep within. Square Enix should look at other lesser known retro revivals like Bionic Commando Rearmed (the first one, NOT the second) or Rocket Knight to find revivals that relish in the joy of a timeless game design, but also manage to lavish a newer generation of gamers in it’s merits. As it is, Elevator Action Deluxe can at best only appeal to the core fanbase, and maybe not even that.
GrE Grade: D
Popularity: unranked [?]
