Despite being the worst film in the series, RoboCop 3 has all of the elements to make a must-play video game. This time around Officer Murphy wields new weapons and takes to the sky in order to serve and protect. Best of all, this time around he's not battling megalomaniacal billionaires, but rather robot ninjas. If that's not the recipe for an incredible video game, then I don't know what is. Too bad I was stuck playing this barely competent adaptation for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
First the good news: In this video game you'll never know Peter Weller was replaced by Robert John Burke. Then again, I have a hunch Buckaroo Banzai has no interest in being connected to a game this truly horrible. I wish I had Peter Weller's lucky.
Much like the first RoboCop (and I assume the sequel, which I opted against reviewing), this is yet another unspectacular action game that barely scratches the tip of what makes this character so interesting. The labyrinthine level designs of the 1989 game are gone, replaced with diagonal shooting and infuriating boss battles. What Ocean has created is a generic action game that is even worse than the already bad movie.
Robo walks from left to right through a bunch of familiar locales, including city streets, a factory and OCP Tower. The good news is that our hero does more than just slowly wander around; he also dons a jetpack and takes out enemies from the sky. There are five stages in total, though only four feel fleshed out to be called real stages. The final boss battle is a joke, requiring players to dodge enemies we know Robo has no problem killing in order to hack a computer. No big robots to take down, just two regular-sized ninjas we've already fought in other stages.
The graphics are bad, but that goes without saying. Robo looks like he stepped out of a Saturday morning cartoon, a far cry from the hero whose first movie was notoriously slapped with an X-rating for violence. This is a kinder gentler Robo, one who isn't fazed by ninja attacks and repeating backgrounds. Needless to say, I spent more time on this paragraph than Ocean did designing the graphics.
Even the most die-hard fan of RoboCop will admit that the third movie was kind of a mess. But even with the horrible acting and cheesy storyline, there were still a few ideas that could translate to a video game. How cool would it have been to take control of the ED-209 and flip the tables on an army of robot ninjas? And what about the epic battle where the police go head-to-head with brigade of OCP-brainwashed thugs? And just imagine how different this would be if Robo actually got help from the resistance, a key plot point in the movie of the same name. These ideas may not have turned RoboCop 3 isn't the must-own game of 1992, but at least it would show they were trying.
This is ultimately the lazy tie-in that I feared. It's a generic action game with bad graphics and only five short stages. It's clear that the developers had little time to make a game they had almost no interest in. You could throw a RoboCop 3 cartridge into a landfill and find a better 8-bit action game. Nope, I won't buy that ... not even for a dollar!
