~ Juegos que Hay que Jugar Antes de Morir ~
Parte 2 — Los 80s

Juego 61: Elevator Action (1983)

La verdad es que tiene poco que ofrecer, pero lo que hace, lo hace bastante bien. Te enganchas enseguida. Los enemigos dejan un poco que desear y me di cuenta de que podías entrar en las puertas rojas como a la tercera partida, pero juegazo.

Originally published in 1983 for arcade machines, Elevator Action precedes the turn of the 1990s espionage fiction and, in the context of video games, the revolution of the spy genre in the late 1980s. The time is not yet ripe for stealth mechanics (excluding the seminal Castle Wolfenstein, Metal Gear has just been released when Elevator Action is ported to the NES) and the title borrows liberally from pulp fiction: amusingly, the Japanese boxart is deliberately comic, while the US cover is more realistic, somewhat evoking Harry Palmer.

The protagonist Otto starts at the top of a thirty-storey building and he has to climb it down while stealing the secret plans, the location of which is indicated by the red doors. While he is carrying out his mission, enemy agents come out of the blue doors and try to kill the spy immediately. There is no real stealth, as you are generally spotted at the beginning of a level, the enemies thusly chasing you directly. The core of the gameplay therefore lies in the ability to choose a particular timing to enter the red rooms and elevators, while getting rid of the enemies in any way you can – bullets, high-kicks or more creative approaches. The concept is quite simple and easy to grasp, but it's hard not to feel a certain boredom by the end of the first level. The title only increases its difficulty by speeding up the enemies' reflexes; sure, the lift patterns are changed, but the environments remain the same.

In fact, such an approach even creates frustration. The game never provides a map of the building – even if only with a vertical scrolling at the beginning of a level – so it is impossible to construct an ideal route. It's not uncommon to take a lift that leads to a dead end, forcing you to turn around and suffer through the endless spawn of enemies. Also, some actions respond in a sub-optimal way: to crouch you have to press down, but the character does not get up immediately. For that, you have to press up, which wastes time when the goal is to jump directly. The imput detection seems to strict when taking the stairs, causing some chaotic and unwanted fights. This arc of shortcomings leads to serious problems when the action gets messy on screen and signals a general lack of quality of life. Elevator Action isn't bad, but it never stands out in its execution, which remains in the average range of NES ports. The potential is however there and gave rise to a second, more polished iteration, Elevator Action Returns, in 1994.

Cute li'l game! Simple, but the game gets a lot of mileage out of how many things you need to be paying attention to - easy to get tunnel vision on a single floor and lose track of the spies building up on the next floor. Each "screen" is quite involved for what it is, and each loop strikes a good balance in variation while also retaining the general gameplay flow of each building. Add on top of that things like being able to shoot out the lights (and, moreover, brain one of the enemy spies with one of the ceiling lights), and you have a nice, solid, fun li'l game.