"A lot of fun, but the music is extremely grating"

I originally played Elevator Action on an arcade machine at my dentist's, and I was instantly hooked. Playing around with elevators was a lot of fun, and so was shooting down lights, kicking enemies, and squashing them with the elevators. When I was browsing through a bin of old games, I was surprised to find a version for the NES. It was inexpensive, so I bought it right away.

Gameplay-8

As I said, earlier, this game is a whole lot of fun. The object of the game is to climb down a 30 story skyscraper and steal secret documents behind red doors. Once you have found all the documents, you must get to your car at the bottom of the tower. Men in black will pop out of doors and try to shoot your man down, so you need to use all of your skills to complete. You can just kill enemies by shooting, but it's far more satisfying to trap them under elevators, shoot the lights down onto their heads, or kick them in the face. Unfortunately, the controls are not perfect. Jumping is slow, and to open doors or go down elevators one must tap up or down in precisely the right place. Some people have complained that when your character ducks, you must tap up again to stand, but this did not bother me as it makes it easier to change directions while crouching.

Music-0

The music is awful. The same, simple-yet-irritating, song repeats every ten seconds. Possibly the worst music ever in a game. The music is so terrible it keeps the game from receiving an 8.

Sound-7

Too bad the music stinks, because the sounds are pretty good. Your gun makes a cool bang sound, men in black make a little thud when they die. It's nothing extraordinary, but it's pretty good.

Graphics-4

The graphics are basically Atari quality, and remain basically unchanged from the arcade version, except for the heroes shoes, which were an ugly red in the arcade. Everything else is pretty ugly. The enemies are just two colors, and the levels change to ugly shades of pink and other ghastly colors as you progress. The only good thing about the graphics is that when you shoot out a light, the entire building gets dark. All in all, though, the graphics stink.

Story-???

I have no idea what the story is, but I suppose that it isn't very good.

Conclusion

This a fun action. It get's repetitive after a while, and the music and graphics are subpar, but it's a lot of fun.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/11/03