Man, the Mythbusters would love this one.
Can you, in fact, make a car jump about five times its own height, land on a platform,
and keep driving?
Can you throw oil at a police car and knock it off the road without suffering any damage
to your own vehicle?
Can you get 5000 points for doing so?
I get the feeling the answers to all of those will be "busted," but that didn't stop City
Connection.
This old-school arcade classic about painting roads around the world hit the NES back in
1988, when exactly this kind of abstraction and moderately Pac-Man-like behavior was condoned
in the video game world.
What exactly is going on here depends on which version you're playing.
The US version presents us with this blonde joker, who's presumably stolen a heck of a
lot of paint which happens to be leaking out of his car, and by covering all the roads
(including the inexplicable suspended tracks) with paint he evades the police?
Yeah, doesn't make much sense, so let's try again.
According to the original Japanese version, you're in fact playing as a woman named Clarice,
who's driving an '81 Honda City (hence the name), and while on a whirlwind tour of the
world all Carmen Sandiego-style you've hit upon the bright idea of painting every road
you drive on just because you've been there.
No less strange, perhaps even more so, but at least there's some rationale.
But you're probably not going to care, because you're being chased and you've gotta paint
and there's freakin' CATS everywhere.
So.
Drive and jump, jump and drive, collect oil cans and use them to spin out the police presence.
Hit a cat or - even more inexplicably - a bamboo shoot growing out of the street, and
you lose a life.
Hit a car that isn't spinning in oil, and you explode all Mach Rider-style, only for
your various limbs and shrapnel and whatnot to re-form into hearts and bounce around the
screen to some lighthearted tune.
Look, it's strange, but it's the 80s!
Everyone was just shocked by the fact you had detailed backgrounds of New York and London
and Paris... and then you collect three balloons and then all of a sudden you're warped all
the way out to the freakin' TAJ MAHAL in Agra.
City Connection could probably be coded in twelve minutes by any 15-year-old with a can
of Monster today, but it's still pretty darn fun and challenging.
Your little Honda City can turn on a dime, though you've got a second or two after such
a maneuver where you're limited in what you can do.
Acceleration isn't an issue, as Elwood Blues has seemingly glued your gas pedal down so
you're maintaining a constant speed.
The entire difficulty is in the execution, then, as your every move is stymied by CATS
FROM OUT OF NOWHERE.
Still, for a quick romp through your every mad road-painting fantasy, I can safely say
that there's nothing else out there that's going to scratch that particular, racing-slash-platforming
itch.
That might be for the better, in truth.