Crime Busters (Family Computer Clones)

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Crime Busters was made by Bit Corp. in 1989 for clone systems of the Family Computer. As Bit Corp. made several Atari System clones and considering the spelling of the game’s name on the cartridge the game is likely to be inspired by the 1988 light gun game Crime Buster released for the Atari 8 bit computers.

The game consists of three levels. Beating all three levels will cause the game to loop back to the first level, preceding to accumulate the score. The first level takes place at a bank heist. The second level is a warehouse in which ninjas are fought while civilians are avoided. Similar to the Atari game’s warehouse level shootable lamps are on the ceiling. These darken the room when being shot. The third level plays in an office. Here gangers with hostages and civilians should be avoided and just the gangsters who are standing alone should be shot.

The used gun has an infinite capacity and an infinite amount of bullets. Depending on which light gun is used, the gun in the game is full automatic and/or semi automatic. An ordinary Zapper will be semi automatic whereas the Hyper Shot and guns with a similar trigger function as a full automatic gun. The Nintendo Gun can be used in both modes. Using the trigger will result in semi automatic fire, whereas using the hammer will result in full automatic fire.

Besides Taiwan the game was released in South America for NES clone systems. The in the USA located company Games Tech makes reproduction cartridges based on the Brazilian version. These NES clone versions are noticeable for having the full automatic fire feature removed. Instead shots are fired by releasing the trigger button of Hyper Shot style guns.

I adore the company Bit Corp. They were the manufacturer of the Gamate, the first gaming system I ever owned. Seeing that they also made a light gun game made me really happy. Personally I like the game. The graphics are rather simple and the music is nothing special. However the game is nicely presented and the controls are tight. I like the fact that the stages can be freely selected. With just three levels the game is very short but together with the loop mechanic and the scoring system the game staid interesting to me for quite some time.

The label of the Taiwanese version simply uses a picture from the famous comic Lucky Luke made by Morris. Personally I think this is a poor choice as the game is not Wild West themed. The version published by Gradiente shows a lovely drawn picture showing the first level. The Games Tech reproduction shows a nice variant of the Gradiente version’s logo. The Dismac variant shows a nice logo and an in game screen capture of the second level.