Video Games magazine summed up Spy Hunter in April 1984 as “a dressed-up, higher-tech version of Bump-’N-Jump with James Bond overtures”. Bally Midway’s coin-op put the player behind a real steering wheel, with an accelerator pedal and a high/low gearstick, driving a white spy car down an endless scrolling road. A weapons van fed it machine guns, oil slicks, smoke screens and missiles, a boathouse turned it into a speedboat, and an electronic arrangement of the Peter Gunn theme played all the way. Not everyone in 1984 was impressed. Retro Gamer later decided that “no videogame has captured the silliness of Eighties culture better”.
Fast facts
- Maker: Bally Midway.
- Designer: George Gomez.
- Arcade: shown in late 1983; in arcades by early 1984.
- Controls: steering wheel with fire buttons, accelerator pedal, two-speed gearstick.
- Music: an electronic version of Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme.
- Home versions: Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro (Sega in America, U.S. Gold in Britain); NES (Sunsoft, 1987).
- Sequels: Spy Hunter II (arcade, 1987), Super Spy Hunter (NES), and console games from 2001.
In the arcade
Midway showed Spy Hunter to arcade operators at the Amusement and Music Operators Association show in Chicago, where Video Games spotted “a new sit down driving/shooting game titled Spy Hunter” on the Bally stand. George Gomez, who had worked on Midway’s Tron, was its designer.
The cabinet was much of the appeal. Its steering wheel had firing buttons built into it, and Video Games counted four, for the machine guns, oil slicks, smoke screens and missiles. Each game began with the weapons van pulling over and lowering its ramp, and the spy car rolling out onto the road. Midway gave beginners a grace period. In Electronic Games’ account, “crashed cars are replaced without cost for the first minute — after which time everything counts”. After that, extra cars came only at set scores.
Points came from destroying enemies and from distance covered. The enemies each had a speciality. The Road Lord was bulletproof and had to be rammed off the road; the Switch Blade had “buzz saw hubcaps”; the Enforcer fired a shotgun; and a helicopter, the Mad Bomber, dropped bombs. Civilian cars shared the road, and hitting one stopped the score counter for a while. Every so often the weapons van came back, and driving up its ramp added a new weapon. On some stretches the player could turn off into a boathouse, where the car became a boat, chased by the Barrel Dumper and Doctor Torpedo.
The music
The Peter Gunn theme was not the first choice. Retro Gamer reports that early versions of the game played the James Bond theme, and that Midway could not secure the rights to it. The replacement became part of the game’s identity. “I especially liked the ‘Peter Gunn Theme’,” wrote Video Games’ reviewer, who was otherwise lukewarm about the game.
The reviews
Video Games gave it a lukewarm welcome in April 1984: “well-constructed, but isn’t particularly compelling”, with variety only “late in the game when the killer helicopters come after you”. Its verdict: “a driving game without a driving force behind it.” Bill Kunkel of Electronic Games thought the graphics “workmanlike but hardly inspiring”, but “what rescues Spy Hunter is its exhilarating play-action and the quality of the driving simulation”.
Players took it seriously. Retro Gamer told the story of Paul Dean, who sat at a Spy Hunter cabinet in Upland, California, on 28 June 1985 for eleven and a half hours and scored 9,512,590, a score printed in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records.
Home versions
In America Sega published the home versions, and U.S. Gold released them in Britain, where Spy Hunter became one of its early Spectrum games remembered as classics. The Spectrum version cost £7.95, and CRASH gave it 89% in May 1985. “The scrolling graphics are some of the best I’ve seen on the Spectrum,” one reviewer wrote. The magazine’s summary called it “loads of fun to play”, though “it certainly isn’t a thinking game”. On the Commodore 64, Zzap!64 explained that a counter “reading 999 ticks away at the bottom of the screen”, and while it ran the supply of cars was unlimited. Extra cars came every 10,000 or 20,000 points depending on the level chosen, and a second joystick could fire the extra weapons. Versions for the BBC Micro and the Atari 8-bit computers followed.
On the NES, Spy Hunter came from Sunsoft in 1987. It was still popular in 1988, when it appeared in the charts in the first issue of Nintendo Power.
Later history
Midway’s Spy Hunter II (1987) moved the camera behind the car for a more three-dimensional view, and let two players drive at once on a split screen. Sunsoft made Super Spy Hunter for the NES, which Nintendo Power described in 1991 as a “super-speed sequel to the NES and arcade hit” with six stages across city, desert, sky and water.
The name came back in the 2000s. SpyHunter for the PlayStation 2 (2001) was developed by Paradigm Entertainment, and SpyHunter 2 followed. In 2003 Universal acquired the film rights, with Dwayne Johnson expected to star. He appeared in Midway’s Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run (2006), a game meant to accompany the film, but no film has been released. A further Spy Hunter, by TT Fusion, came out in 2012, and the arcade original and Spy Hunter II are both in the Midway Arcade Origins compilation.
Sources
- Video Games (Pumpkin Press), vol. 2 no. 5, February 1984, pp. 32 and 37: AMOA show report; Spy Hunter on the Bally stand.
- Jim Gorzelany and Zelmo, “Arcade Games with a Sporting Chance”, Video Games vol. 2 no. 7, April 1984, pp. 48–49: Spy Hunter review (“Bump-’N-Jump with James Bond overtures”; the controls and four wheel-mounted buttons; scoring; the timed phase; the Peter Gunn theme; the boat; the verdict).
- Bill Kunkel, “On the Road with Spy Hunter”, Electronic Games vol. 2 no. 15, October 1984, p. 70: the weapons van; “firing buttons built into the wheel”; the free first minute; the graphics and the verdict.
- Digital Press issue 52, May 2003: George Gomez’s recollections, credited “Coin-op Spy Hunter, Tron”.
- Wikipedia, “Spy Hunter” (web, secondary): November 1983; Gomez as designer; the Mancini theme and the James Bond theme that could not be licensed; Sunsoft’s NES version (1987); Paradigm Entertainment; Spy Hunter 2; TT Fusion (2012); the film, believed cancelled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_Hunter
- Stuart Hunt, “Spy Hunter”, Retro Gamer issue 44 (2007), pp. 34–35: Bally Midway, 1983; “the silliness of Eighties culture”; the white Interceptor car and the cabinet; the enemies and the Mad Bomber; the boathouses; the James Bond theme; the film and Nowhere to Run.
- Retro Gamer issue 3 (2004): Midway and the Bond licence; the missiles; Spy Hunter II’s third-person view and split screen; the PlayStation 2 and Xbox games.
- Paul Drury, Retro Gamer issue 18 (2005), pp. 74–75: Paul Dean’s 1985 high score.
- CRASH issue 16, May 1985, pp. 130–132: Spectrum review (U.S. Gold, £7.95; the enemies; 89%).
- Zzap!64 issue 1, May 1985, pp. 40–41: Commodore 64 review (U.S. Gold/Sega; the 999 counter; extra cars; the second joystick; civilians stopping the score).
- Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The Story of US Gold (Fusion Retro Books, 2015), p. 38 (U.S. Gold’s April 1985 catalogue, with Spy Hunter among the Sega titles) and p. 120 (Spy Hunter among the early Spectrum games “celebrated as classics”).
- Acorn User issue 54, January 1986: BBC Micro chart (Spy Hunter, U.S. Gold).
- ANALOG Computing issue 35, October 1985: Atari 8-bit review (Sega).
- Nintendo Power issue 1, July/August 1988: Spy Hunter in the charts.
- Nintendo Power issue 25, June 1991, p. 80: Super Spy Hunter.
- Retro Gamer issue 112, March 2013, p. 98: Midway Arcade Origins (Spy Hunter and Spy Hunter II).