Dick Tracy is a mystery/action game based on the comic strip. Most notable for its extremely unforgiving gameplay; Dick Tracy let's you take control of a police detective out to solve crimes by combining clues to make an arrest on a list of suspects.
Also in series
Reviews View More
It took child me so long to figure this out.
Dick Tracy on NES is one of those games that I definitely hated as a kid, but after growing up and getting more skillful, intelligent and patient with my gaming it started growing on me a bit.
The game is obviously far from perfect and not a five-star classic for the system, but I can appreciate what the developers were going for here. It feels cool to go around finding clues and punching out thugs, thus accomplishing the task of making the player feel like Dick Tracy.
The side-scrolling sections are fine and Dick Tracy is more capable than a lot of other playable characters from this era, avoiding common negatives like being able to shoot while ducking and attack while jumping.
However as anyone who has played this knows, the top-down driving sections are bad. The car controls terribly and takes a lot of getting used to. And of course the most annoying thing about the game, the asshole snipers perched on the roofs of buildings 24/7 ready to take potshots at your ass out of nowhere. This leaves you with your only option of disposing them by no-scoping their asses from the ground with a handgun, an incredibly impressive feat when one thinks of it in non-video game terms.
Thus leading us to a massive silver lining to the snipers, they stay dead after being killed. And when I say dead, I mean they stay dead for as long as you don't die or use a password. An absolute godsend, because honestly the game would be downright unplayable if they did respawn. But then it begs the question as to why they had to be there in the first place other than to have more going on in the top-down sections. Rough stuff.
The first-aid kits I feel also could've been done a bit less clumsily, I get the reason they made you press and hold select from the gun(or fist, can't remember) in your inventory to scroll to it and then press A was to keep you from using them by accident when going for your gun or fist but it's still not great. Instead of farming for first-aid kits at stages they should've just had them at the police stations, it makes more logical sense to get bandaged up back at the station anyway rather than while doing a raid on some thug's hideout.
It also kinda sucks that Dick doesn't write down the locations that interrogated suspects mention, but whatever. My memory isn't too horrible yet at the age of 32.
Absolutely nowhere as bad as people think it is. I'd happily revisit this out of nostalgic boredom for sure.
The game is obviously far from perfect and not a five-star classic for the system, but I can appreciate what the developers were going for here. It feels cool to go around finding clues and punching out thugs, thus accomplishing the task of making the player feel like Dick Tracy.
The side-scrolling sections are fine and Dick Tracy is more capable than a lot of other playable characters from this era, avoiding common negatives like being able to shoot while ducking and attack while jumping.
However as anyone who has played this knows, the top-down driving sections are bad. The car controls terribly and takes a lot of getting used to. And of course the most annoying thing about the game, the asshole snipers perched on the roofs of buildings 24/7 ready to take potshots at your ass out of nowhere. This leaves you with your only option of disposing them by no-scoping their asses from the ground with a handgun, an incredibly impressive feat when one thinks of it in non-video game terms.
Thus leading us to a massive silver lining to the snipers, they stay dead after being killed. And when I say dead, I mean they stay dead for as long as you don't die or use a password. An absolute godsend, because honestly the game would be downright unplayable if they did respawn. But then it begs the question as to why they had to be there in the first place other than to have more going on in the top-down sections. Rough stuff.
The first-aid kits I feel also could've been done a bit less clumsily, I get the reason they made you press and hold select from the gun(or fist, can't remember) in your inventory to scroll to it and then press A was to keep you from using them by accident when going for your gun or fist but it's still not great. Instead of farming for first-aid kits at stages they should've just had them at the police stations, it makes more logical sense to get bandaged up back at the station anyway rather than while doing a raid on some thug's hideout.
It also kinda sucks that Dick doesn't write down the locations that interrogated suspects mention, but whatever. My memory isn't too horrible yet at the age of 32.
Absolutely nowhere as bad as people think it is. I'd happily revisit this out of nostalgic boredom for sure.