WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Crime Patrol

Publisher: American Laser Games Developer: American Laser Games Year: 1994

Here we have the first appearance of a handful of titles that will appear in this series from American Laser Games. ALG was a group based out of New Mexico that briefly revived the laserdisc genre in arcades during the early nineties. This type of arcade game (many of which appeared on the Sega CD) had enjoyed its heyday during the eighties, but had largely disappeared by the time American Laser Games started releasing cabinets.

In order to extend their business, ALG released their games across just about every active, disc-based platform during the early nineties as well. All of their games fell into the shooting gallery genre, where the player ideally used a light gun and shot at various “bad guys” who appeared as they were forced through each level. Each gallery normally featured a few innocent bystanders that would jump out at the player, as well.

Crime Patrol puts the you in the shoes of a rookie cop who must work their way up to the SWAT team. You're presented with a series of missions at each new level (rookie, undercover, SWAT) that you can choose to tackle in whichever order you wish. Start off shooting heavily armed thieves during an electronics store robbery, end up trying to put an end to a highly volatile hostage situation.

As is evident from the screenshots here, the video quality is about as poor as you'd expect. Though this game does illustrate the evolution of the technology over the lifespan of the system. The video shown in Crime Patrol is almost full-screen, which is a far cry from the postage stamp size found in the first FMV games on the Sega CD.

The only thing worse than the video quality in Crime Patrol is the acting. It's all very over-done and laughable. The wardrobe and dialogue doesn't help. Most of the criminals are ridiculous stereotypes, laughing maniacly at you whenever you get shot.

Actually, the game play itself is pretty awful as well. The window between the time most enemies show themselves and the time you have to shoot them is ridiculously small. Crime Patrol suffers from the same problems so many other FMV games did – game play that relies almost entirely on playing the same level over and over again, memorizing when and where your targets are going to leap out at you. A great way to keep people pumping quarters into an arcade cabinet.

Thankfully, each level is rather short, so the amount of targets you have to memorize is pretty low. Unfortunately, however, the last levels feature enemies that pop up in random positions, bringing the frustration factor to a whole new level if you bother to get that far.

Following their four-year run, consisting largely of these shooting-gallery FMV games, American Laser Games began producing PC games aimed at the female market under the moniker of Her Interactive. This wasn't a successful venture, however, and after spinning off Her Interactive into its own label, American Laser Games was eventually bought out by the company.

Her Interactive still makes games today. The company has made its name releasing a series of Nancy Drew titles for the PC and Mac. The rights to American Laser Games' library is currently owned by Digital Leisure, and they along with other laser disc classics like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace have been more recently released for home DVD players and the PC.