Dick Tracy

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Dick Tracy is a side scrolling action game, where you control Dick Tracy through five different stages, killing gangsters with a variety of weapons. Your mission is to investigate the disappearance of Lips Manlis an underworld boss and owner of The Ritz nightclub. Each stage leads to one of the mob bosses until you ultimately capture the big man himself. You hold no weapons at the beginning and your primary attack is your punch. In the meantime, ammo can be collected for either a pistol or a machine gun. The gameplay has some glitches. For example, jumping across platforms to avoid dead pits is sometimes impossible. Also, when entering a new screen you'll frequently be shot before you even have the chance to react and this gets even worse because the game runs in flip screen mode! Other than its few problems, Dick Tracy is a fine title that offers intensive action. The CPC+ version runs on cartridge only, taking advantage of the Plus' advanced hardware.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics on the CPC+ (and the GX4000 console) are colorful and the scrolling is quite smooth. The hardware sprites in pseudo Mode 1 use 15 colors (a feature found only on the CPC+ video hardware). With 16 colors on the backgrounds and 15 colors on its the sprites Dick Tracy looks like a 16bit game rather than a pure 8bit. But, the technique to use hardware sprites limits the number of total sprites on screen. As expected, the CPC and Plus versions are quite different (better graphics for the latter). Also, the game here uses hardware background scrolling (making it fast!) and not flip-screen as with the CPC!. The game's sound is fine, featuring a nice intro tune and a few catchy tunes during gameplay (although I personally prefer the classic CPC tunes!). You can only choose to play either with sound effects or music and the sound effects are nicely done as well.