RoboCop 3

RoboCop 3 on the Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS was made by British studio Digital Image Design, at the time known chiefly for flight simulators, and publisher Ocean Software gave it far more technical freedom on this title than on previous entries in the series. The result is a game that doesn't try to be just another side-scrolling platformer based on the film, but instead consists of five distinct gameplay sections tied together by one story — driving a vehicle through the streets of Detroit, first-person shooting while rescuing hostages, hand-to-hand combat, flying through the city with a jetpack, and a final battle against a robotic ninja.

This variety relied on Digital Image Design's own 3D engine, which in 1991 was among the most technically advanced on home computers and allowed for smoothly modeled three-dimensional environments instead of the flat sprites typical of platformers at the time. Magazines at the time praised especially the transitions between the different play styles within a single title, an unusual approach in the early 1990s — instead of one genre, the game offered players practically a mini-collection of different types of gameplay under a single film license, tied together by unified visual styling and the same engine.

Compared to the later console and eight-bit versions of RoboCop 3, made by a completely different team and focused on a classic platformer without driving or flying sections, this represents a fundamentally different take on the same license, built on the technical capabilities of more powerful home computers of the era. Thanks to its experience with simulators, Digital Image Design was also able to design a control scheme closer to a flight or driving simulation than the simple jumping and shooting typical of platformers of that time.

Why play it: RoboCop 3 on the Amiga will appeal to players who want to see just how ambitiously a 1991 film license could put its own 3D engine to use — a collection of five different gameplay styles in one package, not just another platformer like the other versions.