City Connection Review (NES)

City Connection was a moderately popular arcade game in the early '80s. The game stars you as a rather strapping young man driving around the world to paint the roads white in order to prove he's been there. Doesn't make much sense to us, but hey, whatever floats his boat!

While doing so you must watch out for cars (including police cars) and cats sitting on the road. This must take place in the future, because it doesn't make much sense: some of the roads are suspended in mid-air, and there are holes between parts of the road as well. In the first stage you will find some vertically aligned roads (3 rows wide, 4 high), but as you continue through the game the stages will get more varied and less symmetrical. You can also pick up oil cans and then fire them in order to get rid of other cars, but you can also make cars scroll off the screen to make them disappear.

The controls take a long time to get used to; you have to learn exactly when to jump to reach the higher roads, because if you jump a bit too late you'll land on the second "space" of the road, meaning you have to turn back around and drive back off in order to drive over the "space" at the edge of the platform, which will be left unpainted.

Because you are travelling across the world, the location will change constantly and provide a variety of backgrounds. Eventually you'll go right back to the beginning, though, as in most arcade games, and the levels will continue looping forever; this means it's just a matter of time until you lose all lives or just get bored.

One special mention also has to go out to the music, which is rather poor; there's part of a classic piece of music that plays after every stage, but the music in the actual stages is some of the worst you'll hear on the NES. The system had a good number of sound channels, but this game sounds like it only uses one or two!