By ZZZ
Dead Connection - Arcade (1992)
Enter Taito, who throughout the 1990s, was modernizing classic gameplay with games like the almost-Space-Harrier-clone Aqua Jack, the very old-school arcade-style sports game American Horseshoes, the video whack-a-mole game Monkey Mole Panic, and Arkanoid clones Cuby Bop and Puchi Carat. They were even revisiting and updating series of their own with sequels like Operation Wolf 3, Operation Tiger, Arkanoid Returns, Super Space Invaders '91, Space Invaders '95, Elevator Action 2, the never-officially-released Twin Qix, and a multitude of Bubble Bobble sequels. Whether sequels or originals, most of these releases are very successful at making you forget that you're playing an old-school-style game. Besides being graphically updated, they also expand on the gameplay of their source material, to make for games that would have both looked and felt not at all out of place among the arcades of the 90s.
During this period, they also attempted to modernize the classic arena shooter template with an original game called Dead Connection. This wasn't their first attempt at the genre - they had also developed the innovative and completely overlooked 1981 arcade game Space Dungeon, which had independent eight-way moving and shooting a full year before Robotron. Dead Connection was released in 1992, and is their second and last entry in the genre. It tends to be just as totally neglected as Space Dungeon, but it's actually among the best games of its kind. In fact, it's easily up there with Berzerk and Frenzy, and might even be the best arena shooter to have not been developed by Eugene Jarvis.
Dead Connection is set in America in 1953. It's thematically based on all those old period mob flicks - be it noir movies like those with James Cagney and his contemporaries, or neo-noir films like Godfather. Its plot begins with a local crime boss killing the fiance of a police officer who is trying to take down his racket. So apparently these guys skip the severed horses head thing and go straight to killing the fiance. Not the wisest move, because that our bereaved police officer alive, armed, and pissed off. So he and his buddies go set out, tommy guns in tow, for (great) vigilante justice! By the way, two players can play at once - choosing from any of four characters - but each character is a palette swap.
Its plot is established in a stylized intro that's supposed to lend a sense of noir-style grit. After a shot of the game's head crimeboss, who looks EXACTLY like Marlon Brando in Godfather, you see the hero's fiance standing with her back toward the player, and a pair of headlights immediately floods the foreground. A nameless mobster gets out of the car with a tommy gun in arm, a cigar between his teeth, and an evil grin on his face, and starts blasting away. The view then switches back and forth between the mobster, as he fires away, and the fiance, who's frozen in cliched being-shot-in-an-old-Hollywood-movie poses. Each time your view goes back to the fiance blood is shown splattering across the screen. After the intro finishes you are shown a still image of the four heroes walking into the background. It's a wide shot in a dimly lit street, and probably the best image in the entire game.
It sticks with this style throughout the game, as well. The cars, parks, interiors and exteriors of buildings, and even phone booths, are consistent with the way that they are depicted in 1940's and 1950's Hollywood crime films. Characters look like the heroes and villains of the same films, with the heroes sporting trench coats and hats, and the mobsters generally either donning suits, or going with a more casual look consisting of slacks and suspenders. Point items take the forms of cold hard cash or briefcases, and you regain health with hot dogs, prescription drugs, and booze. The whole game looks fantastic, and is amazingly successful at recreating the feel of those old movies that it's based on.
Taito also kept up this atmosphere very well in the game's dialog. Or, rather, at least they tried to. Their translator's grasp on the English language was obviously limited, and it makes the noir-movie-speak into slightly absurdist comedy. I'm not complaining in the least - it actually makes it all much more memorable. Here is the intro's narration, exactly as it appears: (Showing the heroes taking down mobsters) "Men making a stand against a gigantic crime." (Showing the crime boss) "Evil power steals on." (After hero's fiance is slain) "Sadness, and revenge. They begin fighting, keeping anger in their heart." Most of the game's remaining text is better worded, but its glorious abuse of the English language never ends.
The game is narrated with a series of journal entries, which contain all kinds of amusing nonsense. The noir-speak is entertaining enough itself, but the best material comes from the odd choices of words. The heroes describe doing insane and totally irresponsible things like when they say "We set fire to the warehouse and left it burning". It's all hilariously brilliant.
Like much of what Taito was doing in the arcades in the 1990's, it's also something of a re-envisioning of an old obsolete genre. It takes your basic arena shooter formula - move through a series of screen-sized rooms, avoid hordes of foes, and shoot everything in sight - and injects it with more modern elements to create a game that is more likely to appeal to modern players. It achieves this goal flawlessly - if you aren't familiar with old arena shooters, then Dead Connection will probably feel more natural and play more intuitively than other games like it. It also has what is easily the most expansive, complex gameplay in its genre, and there are a great deal of things that you can do in each level and throughout the game. Furthermore, it retains the genre's directness and mechanical simplicity by making several of your actions context-sensitive. If this was Taito's attempt to create the most refined arena shooter ever, then they very well may have been able to fully realize that lofty goal.
Rather than the dual-joystick setup of Robotron and Smash TV, there's a single joystick with two buttons - shoot and dodge. Besides firing your guns, you've also got an evasion technique that's performed by pushing a second button on the arcade machine. If you execute this move while standing still, your character will belly flop to the ground, ducking below hostile fire. If you execute a dodge while holding the joystick in any direction then you'll perform a dive. Diving also has the benefit of allowing you to get around easier by leaping over certain kinds of terrain - namely railings - rather than having to walk around them. When you begin playing the game - especially if you're accustomed other games in the genre - you'll probably just shoot everything indiscriminately and completely neglect the technique. As you play the game more and more, you'll begin to realize just how valuable a skill it is. For starters, you aren't damaged by making contact with enemies, so there's no risk involved in performing the technique. Most importantly, by always giving you a way out of trouble, it solves the problem that exists in most arena shooters where you can get into positions where there's no way to avoid getting hit. It also creates a great deal of room for improvement, and it's hypothetically possible to 1cc the game with careful play and lots of practice.
Dead Connection is still very difficult, but you have more room for error than in most games of its kind. While one-hit kills are pretty much the standard in the genre, Dead Connection gives you a health meter, which you can even refill by finding health items. You begin the game with a lone life, and there's no possible way to gain any more. To make things a tad easier, you don't have to be exact with your aim to hit your target - if your aim is accurate within a few degrees then the bullet will travel at a slightly different angle straight toward whoever you are shooting. Another rarity for the genre is the presence of melee attacks - by pushing shoot when making contact with an enemy, you'll pistol whip them.
Taito also implemented weapon power-ups - which would be expected, given that Smash TV had them two years earlier. Most of your weapons don't have rapid fire, and you can only have a limited amount of bullets on screen at once, but your shots travel fast, so you can fire at a pretty fast rate. Your default gun can have a few shots on screen at once, whereas the automatic can fire almost as fast as you can mash the button. You can also find a revolver, which doesn't seem to raise your firing rate, so it's probably more powerful than your default gun. The only actual autofire weapon is the machine gun, which you also begin with after continuing. The last weapon is way over-powered - a shotgun that fires a wide shot that does massive damage and can hit multiple foes at once.
Wild Guns gave players the ability to totally lay waste to the game's scenery, but, as awesome as it was, it was little more than a graphical touch to the game. Dead Connection not only has a comparable amount of destructible terrain - an amazing feat in and of itself - but much of the destruction actually factors into gameplay. A great deal of this is achieved by pushing the evasion button when near something that you can interactively destroy, and promptly kicking it. For instance, players can climb the stairs in the first level and kick over a statue, sending it tumbling down the stairs and bowling over any hapless thugs that get in its way. In the street level, you can shoot down a sign above a bar, making it fall on anybody who happens to be standing beneath it. In various levels, if you shoot a table with a candle on it then the candle will fall over and set the table ablaze, injuring anybody who walks into the fire before the flames settle down. You can also mow down your foes by kicking barrels into them, or shoot the barrels and cause them to explode.
If you'd like to just simply destroy things, then there's plenty of that as well. You can shoot railings, paintings, windows, curtains, chairs, statues, doors, cars (which will cause them to explode), bushes, pillars, walls - if it's there, you can probably either destroy it or at least leave bullet holes in it. An especially great graphical touch comes from when you cause a fire or an explosion - it will make the room appear to "light up" with a really cool flicker effect to simulate the light of the flames. It's possible to absolutely obliterate each and every level, and it's pretty cool to watch how much a level will change over the course of playing it.
What might be the coolest thing of all about Dead Connection is how you can interact with scenery, other than destroying it. After you get to playing the game, you'll quickly notice that you can interact with damn near anything on the screen. The coolest thing about this is that each level has its own scenery, so every level is genuinely different from the rest - a major rarity in the genre. If there are stairs, then you can climb them. If there is a room visible through a door, then you can go in it. If there is a conveyor belt, then it will actually move. If there is a balcony, then you can climb up to it. In the factory level, you can pull a switch to make a crate crash down and set off an explosion that will set fire to any foes within its blast radius. When in a room, it's possible to fire out the window or door. You can actually walk right behind curtains, and climb up on ledges at various points, or onto the stage in the theater level. You can even take cover from all fire behind pillars or certain walls by standing behind them and holding the joystick in their direction.
Given its obscurity, it's safe to assume that Dead Connection was a complete financial failure in the arcades. As a result, it never got any ports, and never showed up on any of the many Taito arcade compilations.However, any fan of arena shooters, noir movies, or generally awesome games owes it to themselves to play this.
Intro
Arcade Flyer
Dead Connection
Dead Connection
Arena shooters were a very promising genre in the early 1980s, with their fresh and frenetic gameplay leading to a few noteworthy successes in the arcades, like Berzerk, Frenzy, and Robotron: 2084. Despite the major success of all three games, it did nothing to prevent the genre from disappearing in the mid 1980's. The only really high profile releases after 1982 have been Midway's Smash TV in the early 90s and the XBOX Live Arcade game Geometry Wars. There are several freeware games and XBLA downloads out there as well, but those are mostly just clones of Robotron and GW (which is a Robotron clone itself). Otherwise, anybody looking for high quality, original releases over the last two and a half decades has been pretty much out of luck.
