In the City stages, bounce falling stockbrokers into the ambulance. In the Maze stages, collect sacks of money and avoid tanks. Can you save the world economy?
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I snuck into my office building to play several arcade games on the Fourth of July, the first of which was this. What could be more American than a game satirizing the 1981-1982 recession? Well, never mind the fact that this was put together by a British developer...
Wall Street feels like an exercise in poor taste. It's interesting that it's trying to say something in the early Arcade scene, and you can't deny that it is clearly trying to say something. I don't know that it's saying anything meaningful. The image of stockbrokers defenestrating themselves while unfitting jaunty music plays is certainly memorably and shocking, but I don't think there's any actual depth to the commentary (though the timer being labeled "Dow Jones Index" is cute). And I definitely don't get what the Maze stages are trying to say. Are stockbrokers robbing people, and tanks are in the streets as martial law, and you're some sort of bad guy? Honestly, does the commentary matter? In practice, it reads like an edgy take on the Game & Watch "Fire" and... I dunno, Pac-Man? Tutankham? It just seems so arbitrarily mean to me.
There's basically nothing to the games besides the commentary. The gameplay is pretty janky for as simple as it is, with stuff like how you can save a suicidal stockbroker by scrolling the camera so he lands in the ambulance. Not as important, but the progress indicator on the City stages - the Bank lighting up - is sort of borked as well, since the lights don't match up with the perspective of the building.
That this was made by Century Electronics, a studio whose output otherwise consisted of shameless rip-offs and Hunchback, is a small wonder in and of itself.
Wall Street feels like an exercise in poor taste. It's interesting that it's trying to say something in the early Arcade scene, and you can't deny that it is clearly trying to say something. I don't know that it's saying anything meaningful. The image of stockbrokers defenestrating themselves while unfitting jaunty music plays is certainly memorably and shocking, but I don't think there's any actual depth to the commentary (though the timer being labeled "Dow Jones Index" is cute). And I definitely don't get what the Maze stages are trying to say. Are stockbrokers robbing people, and tanks are in the streets as martial law, and you're some sort of bad guy? Honestly, does the commentary matter? In practice, it reads like an edgy take on the Game & Watch "Fire" and... I dunno, Pac-Man? Tutankham? It just seems so arbitrarily mean to me.
There's basically nothing to the games besides the commentary. The gameplay is pretty janky for as simple as it is, with stuff like how you can save a suicidal stockbroker by scrolling the camera so he lands in the ambulance. Not as important, but the progress indicator on the City stages - the Bank lighting up - is sort of borked as well, since the lights don't match up with the perspective of the building.
That this was made by Century Electronics, a studio whose output otherwise consisted of shameless rip-offs and Hunchback, is a small wonder in and of itself.