Elevator Action is a spy story told in a cross-section. Taito’s 1983 coin-op shows a skyscraper cut open, and the player’s agent lands on the roof, steps into a lift and starts working his way down thirty floors. The lifts are the game. Stand in one and the joystick drives it up and down, so a lift is a way down, a hiding place and a moving platform to jump from, and one CRASH reviewer’s favourite trick was “trying to trap people on top of the elevator”. Somewhere in the building are red doors with secret documents behind them, and the agent cannot leave until he has collected every one.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Taito, 1983.
- The hero: Agent 17, code name Otto.
- The building: thirty floors from the roof to the basement, where a getaway car waits.
- Home versions: Quicksilva’s conversions for the Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC (1987), and Taito’s for the Famicom, NES and Game Boy.
- CRASH: 72% for the Spectrum version, February 1987.
Thirty floors down
The American magazine Video Games described the arcade game in detail in May 1984. “You assume the role of agent 17, code named Otto.” He starts on the 30th floor. Agents step out of doors and fire one-shot pistols that kill him wherever they hit, standing, kneeling or lying flat on the floor; Otto can jump over low shots and duck under high ones. He has “a rapid fire submachine gun”, worth 100 points a kill, and can also “play Bruce Lee and kick the enemy” for 150.
The building itself fights back and helps. Otto can be crushed between the top of a lift and the shaft, or run straight into an empty shaft and fall. On the other hand, shooting one of the lamps hanging from the ceiling drops it on any agent beneath it for 300 points, and puts the lights out across the building for a few moments. Lower down the floors go dark, escalators link them, and near the bottom there is a bank of five lifts that Otto cannot control, so he has to wait for them to come to him.
Each red door holds a briefcase of documents worth 500 points. The first building has eight, and all of them must be collected before Otto is allowed into the car in the basement. The car pays a bonus of 1,000 points times the level. Each new building has one more red door, up to twelve, and agents who reload faster and lie down to shoot more often.
In the arcades
Video Games liked it, “a good action game which allows for a great deal of player input”, but expected it to “get lost in the glut of the laser games” then filling American arcades. Electronic Games nominated it the same year for its 1985 Arcade Award for audio-visual effects, describing it as “a stylish jumping and climbing contest”. Looking back at Taito’s history, Retro Gamer counted it among the company’s minor hits of the mid-1980s, alongside Arkanoid.
Namco’s Rolling Thunder (1986) also sent a secret agent through doors on more than one floor, and Retro Gamer later suggested that Elevator Action had inspired it. Writing about Rolling Thunder in 1987, Sinclair User’s arcade reporter said she found Elevator Action “far more addictive”.
At home
Quicksilva published the British conversions in 1987, programmed by Binary Design. The Spectrum version cost £8.95, according to CRASH, which gave it 72% and could not agree with itself. One reviewer found the game “slow and quite infuriating” and the colour “sloppy”: “I’d stay away from this one.” Another found that “Elevator Action should win awards for addictiveness”, because although the graphics were poor and the sound minimal, “these problems however are more than compensated for by the incredible gameplay”. Sinclair User called it a “conversion from the little known Taito coin-op” that “turns out much better than expected. The play is pretty compulsive.” Its reviewer found “the most perverse layout of elevators” in the lower levels of the building. Amstrad Action’s complaint about the CPC version was that it was too similar to an earlier Amstrad game, Mission Elevator. There was also a Commodore 64 version from Quicksilva.
Taito published the Nintendo versions itself. The NES game was on Nintendo Power‘s list of games for its readers’ poll by September 1988, and the Game Boy version was on sale in America by November 1991. Wikipedia dates the Famicom version to 1985.
Later games
Taito returned to the building in 1994 with the arcade sequel Elevator Action Returns. Later revivals turned it into other kinds of game: Elevator Action Death Parade (2009) was a light-gun arcade game, Elevator Action Deluxe (2011) a download for the PlayStation 3, and Elevator Action Invasion (2021) another light-gun cabinet.
Sources
- Video Games, December 1983, p. 56: arcade report naming Elevator Action among the new games.
- Video Games, May 1984, pp. 47–48: Elevator Action strategy guide (Agent 17, Otto; the 30th floor; the pistols, the submachine gun and the kick; the lights; being crushed; the briefcases, eight rising to twelve; the bonus; “the glut of the laser games”).
- Electronic Games, October 1984, p. 28: 1985 Arcade Award ballot (audio-visual effects nominees).
- CRASH issue 37, February 1987, p. 24: Spectrum review (Quicksilva, Binary Design, £8.95, the three reviewers’ comments, 72%).
- Sinclair User issue 59, February 1987, p. 29: Spectrum review. Issue 61, April 1987, p. 86: Clare Edgeley’s ATEI report (Rolling Thunder and Elevator Action).
- Amstrad Action issue 17, February 1987, p. 73: Amstrad CPC review.
- ZZAP!64 issue 31, November 1987, p. 86: Commodore 64 version from Quicksilva (pokes listing).
- Nintendo Power issue 2, September/October 1988, p. 88: Player’s Poll game list. Issue 30, November 1991, p. 78: Game Boy Power Meter list (Elevator Action, Taito).
- Retro Gamer issue 45, 2007, Mike Bevan’s feature on Taito’s F series hardware: Elevator Action as a minor hit, as cited in the Taito entry. Issue 26, 2006, pp. 76–78, “The Evolution of Rolling Thunder”: Elevator Action as the inspiration.
- Wikipedia, “Elevator Action” (web, secondary): the 1983 arcade release dates, the 1985 Famicom version, Elevator Action Returns and the later revivals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_Action