Express Raider

Publisher: Data East

Designer: Zoltán Kanizsai, Zoltan Czigler, Istvan Ratkai, Ferenc Frank

Type: Beat-em Up

Platform: C64

Release Date: 1986

Rating:

I’ve seen quite a few beatem-up games, though to be honest with you, pretty much all of them involve ninjas and the like, or street fighters, however in this one you happen to be a cowboy, and you are running along the top of the train beating up anybody who gets in your way. Furthermore, you also happen to have just robbed a bank, so it seems that you are trying to get away with as much money as possible (or simply just trying to get away because, well, I suspect the law of the West plays its role here and all that).

Okay, it is probably more than a beatem-up game because when I got to the second level it was more like a shooting gallery where you shoot people who are hiding in the train, while you are riding alongside on your horse. Mind you, I didn’t quite expect that horses would run as fast as trains, but then again this does happen to be a computer game, so I probably should give it a bit of leeway in that regards.

Look, it was okay, but like a lot of the games that I have been playing around with, I found that this one ended up getting particularly hard once I hit the second level – namely the shooting gallery and all that. The first level was pretty easy though, but I guess it had a lot more to do with trying to control your character, and also getting the shots to go where they are supposed to go. In the end though, while it was a nice game, it really isn’t worth spending all your time playing it, despite it being one of those games that the video game magazines back in the day would really hype about them.

Anyway, there doesn’t seem to actually be a Wikipedia page for the game, which sort of suggests that it really wasn’t all that groundbreaking, at least to be remembered. However, you can find an entry on Lemon64, which sort of does say something.