64th Street: A Detective Story

In the spirit of Final Fight…

The story is set in 1939, and it involves Rick and his ward Allen. Rick is a 35 year-old professional private detective and manager of Rick’s Detective Agency. Allen is a 19 year old, reformed delinquent who Rick took under his wing. An evil corporation known as the Legacy Organization, kidnapped the daughter of a mid-aged rich man and left him a letter explaining why they kidnapped her. Late one night, before Rick and Allen was about to close their office, the mid-aged rich man, rushed inside the office while being exhausted. He asked for support on saving his daughter and gave the letter to Rick and Allen. The next day, Allen notices an advertisement in the classifieds with similar sentence structure to the letter left by the kidnappers. They soon realize that the writing was actually a secret code, only understood by certain crime lords. Rick and Allen decide to take matters in their own hands and rescue the rich man’s daughter.

Now that is some fucking story for a beat ’em up. This game was clearly inspired by Capcom’s “Final Fight” and there is nothing wrong with that. I remember playing this game a lot more then “Final Fight” because the older teenagers would hog that machine. It was also ironically placed right next to the “Final Fight” arcade machine. Growing up my cousin Tommy would take me to the arcade pretty often and I got to experience several games before they were ported over to the NES, Super NES or the Sega Genesis. The 90’s was definitely the golden age of the beat ’em up genre. Everything from “Golden Axe”, “Cadillac’s and Dinosaurs” to “Arabian Nights” and “Brute Force” was at the arcade I went too, some were fantastic while others were simply awful. Usually the popular ones were always busy and since I was about nine to thirteen years old during this time I had to either wait or play other games. This lead me to play “64th Street: A Detective Story” a lot more then “Final Fight”.

Rick looks like my step-father and is the “Haggar” of this game, Allen looks like a gang member from “A West Side Story” and is the “Cody” of this game. There isn’t a “Guy” equivalent. The color scheme is very colorful which is odd for a game set in 1939. The characters themselves are nicely detailed and large. The backgrounds are nicely rendered and everything can break if you throw an enemy into it. This leads to items or food which can add points to your score or fill up your health bar. The music is okay, it’s nothing special but also not annoying. The sound effects are good but some times when Haggar… I meant Rick yells it sounds weird, almost like “DURRR!”, oddly enough it’s more annoying than Colossus’ “HURRR!” . The enemies have good designs as well but where exactly would you find these people? What city are they in? You have pirates, boxers, leather jacket wearing bozos, strangely dressed wrestlers and ex military looking guys. Problem is this is 1939 yet they look like their in the 1990’s.

The craziest thing about this game is the boss battles. They are very large with very interesting clothing designs . They also have cheap quarter wasting moves and can become very annoying. There are three options to stop their cheap moves; one, you have a lot of quarters, two, you can emulate the game and just hit the select button to add virtual quarters or three, you can just keep attacking them with precisely timed jump kicks. The most annoying boss in the game is the flamboyantly dressed twin wrestlers who are wearing very colorful one shoulder wrestling tights. I died more times fighting them than I did the entire game. Another boss who I want walk the plank was the spinning pirate. He looked like “Sloth” from “The Goonies” and just spun around stopped, spun around and stopped and spun around and stopped again. Funny thing is that when he stops and you see his stupid fucking face he actually looks like he’s dizzy from spinning so much.

I prefer to play as Cody … sorry I meant Allen over Rick. Rick is the slower power hitter and Allen is the faster combo hitter, they both have different move sets and styles. They also have a few good combo moves and the special “get off my ass but lose some life” room clearing move too. As you start advancing in the game you soon realize that the levels get stranger. You go from the gang filled city streets, to a wharf (which you can toss all the enemies off the platform), a long train ride, secret warehouse, the enemy headquarters and finally a blimp. Each level ending boss kinda fits the level you just played through. The boss enemies become regular enemies as well which can be a pain in the ass but the good thing is that they aren’t as strong.

Overall the game isn’t terrible but its not great either, this is gonna fall somewhere in between for most of you guys. I however would say it’s just above average. I had fun with it and I played it a few times with my friend Niloy and my brother Scott, who just kept saying that we need to just play “Final Fight” instead. Once you beat though, at least by yourself there isn’t a reason to play it again and once done just play “Final Fight”. One the positive note this eventually lead Jaleco to create the “Rushing Beat” trilogy.

Developed by – C.P. Brian

Published by – Jaleco

Released in – 1991

Rating – 6 out of 10