RoboCop 2

While home computers got a platformer with shooter elements from Ocean Software, the arcade version of RoboCop 2 was made a few months later by an entirely different studio – Japan's Data East, which licensed from Ocean the right to produce the arcade game itself and approached it completely differently, in its own style of coin-op games from the turn of the eighties and nineties.

The second player in the cabinet doesn't take on a different character but instead controls a second copy of RoboCop in a different, purple-tinted shade – a solution typical of arcade cabinets that allowed two people to play the same character side by side without having to invent a second hero. The game also differs mechanically from Ocean's version: RoboCop is permanently armed with a pistol with separate buttons for firing left and right, can knock enemies down with a melee strike or body blow, and part of the levels also switches to a behind-the-back view with a targeting reticle, with which the player shoots at attackers rushing toward the foreground of the screen – a mechanic the computer platformer version doesn't have at all and which is typical of Data East's arcade cabinets. Enemies also come in much denser waves, because the arcade machine was built for short, intense play sessions paid for by coin, not for a gradual, more leisurely progression through levels like at home on a computer.

This emphasis on fast action for multiple players, frequent switching of perspective, and simple, coin-suited pacing makes the arcade RoboCop 2 an experience much closer to Data East's coin-op action games than to Ocean Software's film license, even though both versions are based on the same film source material and the same main hero.

Why play it: The arcade RoboCop 2 is worth trying for its two-player co-op and its different combat style with switching to a targeting view – it's a completely different game from the computer version, even though it carries the same name, license, and year of release.