Dick Tracy (Sega Master System)

In 1990, Warren Beatty made a film adaptation of the classic comic strip Dick Tracy, and it was really good. It got beat up by critics when it was new, but just watch it, it’s great. Trust me on this one, it’s a lot better than its reputation would suggest, and probably more palatable to modern audiences because comic book movies are more of the norm by now.

Dick Tracy as a concept translates very well into a game, because he’s a detective with cool gadgets facing off against vicious gangsters. It’s sort of like Batman in that there’s nothing about the property that needs to be tweaked or re-imagined in order to make sense as a video game. But, when it comes down to it, execution matters more than concept.

Cinemassacre has extensively covered the NES game based on the movie, there was an AVGN episode about it and I did a Full Playthrough of it. It’s for sure a bad game, though I would say it’s not even close to being the worst games in the NES library. I do have to give the game points for its ambition, though. It really wanted to be a robust cop simulator, with driving, gunplay and actual detective work, but there’s just way too much wrong with it to be enjoyable.

I’m a really big fan of the Dick Tracy comic strip. I’m not normally into the the crime drama genre, but Dick Tracy exaggerates things in an over-the-top way that makes it interesting. The simple black and white lineart gave rise to a lot of very creative character designs, and the villains are very memorable and fun. I like how surreal it is, and the lore gets incredibly deep. I enjoy it on the same level as I do Batman, which I hope makes it clearer for those of you who don’t know what Dick Tracy is.

I’ve had this Dick Tracy Sega Master System game sitting on my shelf for awhile now, and I decided to give it a shot.

You start off walking down the street as Dick Tracy, shooting gangsters and jumping over boxes. There’s an interesting gimmick in that there’s a platforming layer on the bottom, and there’s a shooting gallery element on the top. Enemies will show up across the street, and you’ll hold down the button and move your gunfire around like a cursor to take them out. I’m interested in this as a concept, except it’s not executed in a way that’s very interesting. Shots coming from the background hit you instantaneously, and the controls are so sluggish you can’t really dodge anything, so you’re basically just trying to clean out the top of the screen as soon as enemies scroll up to hit them before they can shoot you. The game also has context-based melee attacks, which I’ve always liked in 2d platformer games because it’s a clever way to give you an extra attack without requiring an additional button. If Dick Tracy is right against an enemy, he’ll punch instead of shooting his gun.

Then as soon as you get to Level 2, the game takes away your gun for absolutely no reason. My first run through the level, I got slaughtered because you just trade blows with enemy after enemy, and your health eventually will run out before you can get to the end. Then on my second life, I figured out enemies can’t punch you when you duck, so I just went through punching guys in the balls.

There’s some aspects to this you can’t see in the gameplay footage. You have to push up on the controller to stand up again after ducking, and you can’t move when you’re ducking. Your ability to move also becomes extremely hampered when you’re taking damage, so it’s really difficult to dodge the molotov cocktails some of the bad guys are throwing. You basically just try to take as little damage as you can and make it through, but avoiding damage really isn’t up to you. I discovered that this is a very common theme throughout the entire game.

One thing that really sucks is the “Mega Crush” attack that Dick Tracy has. You push both buttons together and a quick cutscene plays of Dick Tracy radioing for backup. The problem is, this is very touchy and it’s extremely difficult to avoid activating it when you’re trying to attack while jumping. I ended up giving up on trying to attack while jumping, which made the stiff, restrictive controls even more restrictive. Also, the effect that this grants is very brief and doesn’t do a very good job of helping you anyways.

I never could really figure out the correct way to fight bosses. Dick Tracy doesn’t like to move left or right after he’s done shooting his machine gun, so I don’t get how you’re supposed to run and gun in order to dodge the boss’s attacks.

The key to this game is doing well on the Bonus Stages, which are basically like a Hogan’s Alley shooting range. Shoot the bad guy targets, try to avoid shooting innocents. If you don’t make too many mistakes, you can score extra Continues. There’s three Bonus segments in this game, so you can get enough extra tries to make it through the end of the game.

There’s also an on the rails shooting segment involving cars, which isn’t bad I guess. Jumping over bullets coming from the left and right takes a bit of skill to pull off, and if you time your shots correctly, you can kill cars on the edge of the screen before they have a chance to fire on you. The problem is, this exact same level is repeated several times with no changes whatsoever that I could see, which is when I started to notice that this game was clearly recycling content in order to water down its length.

The game continues, recycling levels over and over. Eventually you fight Flat Top and it’s extremely difficult because he guns you down really quickly. I honestly can’t give you any advice on how to beat him, I just kept retrying until I got lucky.

So, I didn’t really hate this game for the most part, I just was mostly bored and hoping it would end soon. Then I hit level 6-1 and the game got extremely bad.

Like level 2, you can’t use your gun, except now there’s incredibly precise platforming, and enemies will constantly spawn from the sides of the screen and push you into a pit. Any chances of this game getting away with a “not bad, but not good” review from me completely went out the window. Now, I really hate this game. I’m just lucky I was able to get enough extra continues from the Bonus segments to try the level enough times to hope the game would randomly give me enough windows of enemies not spawning to make it over the pits.

Eventually I got to the last level, which is a recreation of the drawbridge scene from the climax of the film, where Dick Tracy faces off against Big Boy. At this point, I was so numb from this game that I just constantly threw myself at Big Boy over and over until I got lucky and his gear attack didn’t hit me for some reason, and beat the game.

So, that was Dick Tracy for the Sega Master System. What did I learn? I didn’t feel like I learned anything. I didn’t even learn how to play Dick Tracy very well, all I did was sort of keep dying until the game’s randomness lined up in such a way I could get through. I learned that this game was a lot more enjoyable sitting on my shelf than being in the Sega Master System, that’s for sure.

I think there’s something interesting about mixing a platformer and a shooting gallery game, though the execution here is awful. If you’re a game developer, maybe experiment with that concept and see if there’s anything there.

I'd like to see more Dick Tracy games. According to a few statements from Warren Beatty here and there, there might be another Dick Tracy movie eventually. He still owns the rights to it, so it’s certainly possible. That’s probably the only scenario I could see another Dick Tracy game being made.

On the upside though, the game’s box art looks great. I’ll just keep it on the shelf from now on.

Update:

Years after I wrote this review, I tried the Sega Genesis version of this game. It is significantly better to the point of it actually being one of the best games of its kind. The Sega Master System game is just a very crummy port. Here's a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7E6kcEiL7s