SWAT Police Longplay (Arcade) [4K]

Game Info
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Developer: ESD
Publisher: ESD
Year of Release: 2001

Game Review & Impressions
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Released in 2001, SWAT Police is a coin-op release I'm sure very few people have ever heard of. The release of a 2D belt-scrolling reaction shooter seems like a really odd choice for this time period, given the general decline in popularity of the arcade in general, but I generally quite enjoy this type of game, so I gave it a shot.

The game is heavily inspired, practically a clone of, NAM-1975, released for the Neo Geo over a decade earlier. NAM-1975 is essentially a version of Cabal with a horizontally scrolling screen; we're not exactly transcending the heights of originality here - if you were to replace the jungle-themed graphics with modern city skylines and the occasional mega-robot, you get SWAT Police. The developers have even copied the same weird shuffling side-step animation for the player characters, which continues even when not actually moving!

In essence, SWAT Police is a reaction-based target shooter with the player moving a crosshair around the screen by way of the joystick, shooting enemies as soon as they appear. In addition to moving the crosshair, the joystick also moves the player's character left or right along the bottom of the screen, allowing them to avoid incoming bombs, bullets and grenades, with a somersaulting cartwheel move executable via secondary button to get out of sticky situations. Killing enemies may result in a power up, extra weapon of score bonus dropping, which can be collected by shooting it, although these generally disappear if you don't bag them in time.

SWAT Police isn't a terrible game, but it's principal crime is it's clone of a game released 10 years prior, which arguably did everything better to begin with. NAM-1975 not only plays better than this, it also looks better as well; not exactly a ringing endorsement. None of the character sprites in the game include shadows, making them look like cardboard cutouts pasted on to the background layer, and even the audio sample used when a bad guy dies is the same one used in Speedball 2 on the Amiga when a player gets punched out. It's a game which just feels really quite old and stale for the period in which it was released, one which was unlikely to have persuaded arcade punters to part with their cash.

Chapters
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00:00 Attract mode
00:25 Stage 1
02:10 Stage 2
05:00 Stage 3
06:48 Stage 4
10:06 Stage 5
12:26 Stage 6
14:34 Stage 7
18:06 Stage 8
20:58 Stage 9
24:54 Stage 10