There seems to be a common theme before the release of Elevator Action back in 1983 – that is crap, crap, Pac Man clones, Space Invaders clones, crappy arcade ports and did I mentioned crap? In all seriousness, there were some absolute terrific games like Lode Runner, Ultima III, Castle Wolfenstein and let’s not forget M.U.L.E. Oh how I love that game to bits. Reflecting upon this, it’s a year of total extremes, total awesomeness and total crapola yet the sad thing is that crapola dominated the field by a longshot. Yet Elevator Action can be categorised as part of the very small awesomeness group. It’s not a clone, it doesn’t have a yellow mouth imbecile and heaven forbid, it’s not in space. How can one game be so awesome if it doesn’t have any of those? I tell you how – it’s called imagination and dare to be different – that’s how.
So you play the character named Agent 17, or known by his codename ‘Otto’. Your goal is simple – collect four documents, located behind a red door and then escape by going to the bottom level of the 30 storey high-rise building, and then drive away in your getaway car. Yet it’s not that simple to waltz in as there’s plenty of enemy agents trying to stop you. Armed with a pistol and your karate jump kick to dispose the enemy agents, you can also shoot overhead lights hoping they fall down on top of unsuspended enemy agents or simply crush them using the elevator.
And that’s the theme of the game as to go down the levels, the elevator is your only means of transport. Yet around midway, you can also use the escalator to go down thus making it ‘escalator action’ – yes, it had to be said. To control the elevator, all you need to do is walk on it and move up / down. You can also jump across the empty shaft as long there’s no cable lines – other words, you can only do this when the elevator is above you. And if you want to be daring, you can jump on top of one however you have no control this way.
So as you can imagine, there’s plenty of tactics to achieve your goal. My favourites are when an enemy agent is below you waiting for the elevator, best thing to do is to meet him head on, then quickly leap off the elevator thus performing the karate jump and killing the agent. It also comes with a cool thumping sound effect too. Others like crouch shoot as the enemy agents cannot jump at all however they can crouch themselves so watch out for low riding bullets. Also shooting at those overhead lights makes them fall to the ground, temporarily darken the building thus making the enemy agents move a little slower.
Take note of the number of blue doors on each level as this is where the enemy agents arrive from – so the more doors, the higher chance that more than one will pop out causing you grief. Also the game is clever enough to understand that bullets don’t go through solid walls so use this to your advantage, especially at the last ten levels were there’s a lot of elevators about. However the same rules apply when you are trying to shoot so take note of that too.
I’m not sure how many levels this game has however, basing on other games where it starts to freak out after 255, it could be that the same rules apply here. So for each level you complete, the next will be more difficult as enemy agents run / shoot faster and the building layout won’t be straight forward – e.g. you see a red door behind a wall so you need to go down to the next lower level, then catch the escalator up to reach that door. Yet the levels are not randomly generated so you’ll eventually understand the general layout. My personal best though is level five.
Elevator Action is a refreshing addition to arcade gaming as there are way too many clones and space themes. It’s almost like viewing Nirvana as the game brought somewhat realism, or for a better word, recognisable themes. Such a simple concept yet incredibility addictive as it’s not a crazily fast paced game, nor need to read one hundred pages of rules, this game is truly one of the greats for 1983. Highly recommend it.