Spy Hunter II

The follow-up to one of the best known arcade cabinets of the early 1980s reached operators in 1987. Spy Hunter II keeps the premise intact — drive an armed car, shoot the hostile vehicles that crowd you, avoid running civilians off the road — but changes both the viewpoint and the rhythm. Where the original played from directly overhead, the sequel places the camera behind the car and attempts a sense of depth, which on the arcade hardware of the day meant coarser graphics and a road that is harder to read.

The most significant addition is simultaneous play. The cabinet was built for two players at once, cooperation rather than alternating turns, and the record here lists multiplayer support. Weapons work as before: you pull alongside a support vehicle to restock and swap loadouts according to what the current stretch of road demands.

Historically the sequel never escaped its predecessor's shadow. The first Spy Hunter had an unmistakable identity built on its theme music and an instantly legible top-down picture; moving the camera behind the car cost it that clarity, and collisions became noticeably harder to anticipate. For anyone interested in arcade history it remains worth a look as evidence of how Midway was feeling its way toward a third dimension at the close of the decade.

Anyone who knows the original should approach the sequel as a different game rather than an improvement on it.

On OldGame.cz it runs directly in the browser through arcade emulation. Expect period difficulty tuning — coin-operated games were designed so that a single credit would not last long.