Undoubtedly Spy Hunter was a huge success in the arcades back in 1983. Has a James Bond type of feel where you drive a pretty impressive car in top down view, armed with the default machine guns at the front of the car, aiming to survive as long as you can. As simple it may sound, it’s far from it when you are playing on expert. Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall to port this game to the available consoles and the Atari XL was one of them. Whilst graphically inferior to its arcade cousin, the gameplay still has the same intensity and of course, listening to the Peter Gunn’s theme never get old.
Starting the game a truck rolls up and delivers your car. You have unlimited lives too however there’s a timer that counts down to zero from one thousand. I’m not sure exactly how long it equates to in real time however I think it’s only a minute or so. So the aim here is not to go totally berserk and crash your car at your whim however to rake up as many points you can as once the countdown timer hits zero, your next crash means game over. And because there are two difficulty levels dictates the scoring – novice earns an extra spy car every ten thousand points and expert earns one at ten thousand then another every twenty thousand points thereafter.
To score depends upon what you do. Hooning around on tar is about fifteen points / quarter of the screen and in the water twenty five / quarter. Also there are six enemies to destroy and the harder ones naturally score the most – that being the helicopter. This is where you should concentrate all your attention as points equals longevity considering there is no ending, just endurance. And the longer you survive, the scenery will change from tar to icy roads thus naturally icy roads are very difficult to drive. I tend to slow down a little during the icy roads as it’s pretty difficult to control.
Being a spy car, you’ll eventually get access to more weaponry. As mentioned before, you will always start off with the machine guns however they are locked to the front of the car so basically the rear is unprotected. Fear not as after when the road splits into two, eventually another truck will haul up giving you your first rear attack, oil slick. Oil slick does just that, spills oil behind you forcing cars to skid off and crash. However you want to improve this and the only way to get the next is to pass the next road split without crashing – other words, if you crash and pass the next road split, the oil slick truck will roll up again.
So the tactics here is that on your next road split (and if you haven’t crashed), the left road will get you the smoke screen (extremely powerful as it produces a massive smoke behind your car however anyone enters it instantly explodes…go figure) or the right gives you three missiles to destroy the ever-so-painful mad bomber (helicopter). This one is my favourite as this friggin helicopter cannot be destroyed other than those missiles and besides, the oil slick isn’t too bad as a rear attack. Granted though, the mad bomber will disappear after a while so you can ride it off or cheat (more on that later). However you cannot have the smoke screen / oil slick at the same time and you can tell what weapon you going to have by the picture displayed on the top of the truck.
Seeing the truck is one thing however parking into it is another. Sometimes there are enemies abound therefore you really need to be super careful not to destroy the truck in the process. So it’s a matter of driving in from the back of the truck thus requires good timing / dodging / shooting the enemies all at the same time. Taking too long to do this and kiss your truck goodbye (probably cheesed off). Also you need to take care of civilians on the road as shooting them scores no points and do this often you have a permanent ban on points – and I don’t have to tell you what that means right?
As mentioned before, there are six enemies to kill. Ranges from the Road Lord (armoured vehicle that cannot never be shot at, basically just ram it off the road or use smoke screen as oil slick is quite weak on them; however its specialty is ramming you off the road), the switch blade (a car that has blades on its side – other words, you cannot ram it as you will spin away to your death – just dispose of it from the front / behind), the enforcer (has a shot gun on its side – pretty easy to dispatch and scores high too), the mad bomber (bombs the road and cannot be shot at unless you have missiles), barrel dumper and doctor torpedo (both are water enemies and pretty easy to kill too).
From time to time, the road will also split off to the side to a watershed. Not compulsory to use however the water, even though it’s very hard to manoeuvre, scores extremely high. So it’s a matter of going through the watershed and instantly transforms your car to a boat – pretty cool stuff. You still maintain all your weapons however there’s no water truck (does that makes sense?). Eventually the water branches off again to the tarmac however again it’s not compulsory. So if you think you got what it takes to stay in the water, good luck to you but the bright side of it, it does rake up the score tenfold.
To score easy points, you can ‘park’ the boat and press the fire trigger constantly as there are absolutely no civilians in the water. Even the mad bomber (helicopter) cannot destroy you this way as it places bombs just ahead of you. However there’s also a good chance that there will be a bucket load of mines left by the enemy boats that you’ll need to dodge later around or simply just stay there and rake up the points. But that won’t last too long as there’s another boat (doctor torpedo) that will missile you from behind in no time.
However on tarmac it's a different story as there are also civilians you need to be wary of so constantly pulling the fire button won’t do it. Granted that in the interim your only penalty is getting a brief warning sign on the top of the screen stating ‘no points’ however eventually that warning sign will become a permanent fixture meaning you will literally score no more points – period. And if you blow up (or accidentally) destroy the truck too many times, no more truck for you. And did I mentioned that some civilians are kamikaze drivers that suddenly pull on the breaks for no reason?
There is a well-known glitch that was also replicated on the arcade version where the moment you leave the truck you can steer your car to the far right hand side of the screen thus driving quite literally on land. You will score no points however, and especially during those icy road levels, you can scream pass it to sunny days again. I’m not sure if this was intentional however it’s kind of odd that this glitch was replicated with various types of consoles (as it wasn’t just exclusively for the Atari). Note this can only be done if your truck is parked on the right hand side of the screen (not left).
Visually it wasn't the prettiest game however it served its purpose nevertheless. Nice colourful backgrounds and all the cars do look differently instead of some blocky mess. Also there’s a nice transition from green pastures to icy roads and back again. The sounds are also quite decent with all the weapons sounds unique and that constant high pitch sound from the mad bomber can get a little irritating. Yet the highlight is listening to the Peter Gunn’s theme however there are times the music just won’t play at all.
Depending how good you are dictates the length of the game. Normally I last about fifteen minutes per run however I feel it’s best playing it on hard as easy the roads are very quiet thus boredom can kick in quite fast. So for a simple concept, Spy Hunter can be quite a tactical game considering because of its fast paced combat orientated gameplay. Games back then didn’t quite hit that mark especially when playing some sort of driving game however Spy Hunter will certainly fuel your adrenaline glands.