Cisco Heat

Copyright : Jaleco | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Cisco Heat was one of the first racers I ever had the joy of playing on my beloved Amstrad CPC, it was on one of the demonstration tapes on the front cover of Amstrad Action. The idea of the game is not that far away from the recent Need For Speed series by Electronic Arts with the only major difference being you are the cops and it is you that is racing around the city for hard cash.

Get to the finishing line fast and earn more money than you ever could sat behind a desk, watch for oncoming drivers though!

Graphics

Now there is something strange about the full retail version of Cisco Heat that I?m almost positive I didn?t notice in the demonstration version, the playing area is fairly small and is a lot harder to see than I remember.

If the game has always been this way then it is certainly a bad point against the CPC version of Cisco Heat, those that have played the arcade will no doubt be fully aware of this little alteration which most likely took place to make the game run smoother in the home.

Having said that the various locations from the arcade have been rendered perfectly on the small screen with just about every detail remaining fully in one piece. Graphics are nice and detailed but the oncoming traffic could be a little more varied as it soon becomes predictable and boring.

Sound

Sound is nicely done on the CPC with the introduction music being perfectly ported and sounding great. Even that annoying in-game music has been ported over with almost perfect accuracy, in-game sounds are of course fairly limited but then again most home computer versions of Cisco Heat had similar problems and even the arcade unit was a little on the basic side. Very well converted.

Gameplay

You get to drive around various American cities in a Police car in which you are racing against other policemen and women while earning money along the way. That is basicaly the whole idea of the game.

Controls are just as simple as you would expect, simply push up to move forward and use the fire button to switch between high and low gears. If only driving a real car was this simple, maybe more of us would pass the driving test.

Cisco Heat is a game that can be picked up and played by people of all ages, there is something in this title for everyone and it?s just as much fun today as it was on the day of release. As far as CPC racers go this has to be one of the better titles.