Crime Fighters (arcade)
200x100 GFX Company: Konami
Genre: Beat 'em up
Released: USA: 1989
from the arcade intro
Mission

These girls have all been kidnapped by this fat toad!

Go get them back and clean up the streets while you're at it.

This game was Konami's early 1989 entry in the beat 'em up genre, released many months before the wildly popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. This game sets many of the standards seen in Konami's later four-player side-scrollers, especially the sense of humor and background interaction. Players can fall prey to many cartoonish ailments, including being temporarily shortened by falling signs, flattened by opening doors.

This game has some nice movie tributes scattered through its bosses. The second boss wears a hockey mask and carrys an axe, the fourth boss is a lumbering wild-haired masked maniac with a chainsaw and the fifth boss is a creepy guy with a red sweater and a glove with claws on it. The military brawler boss from stage 7 drops to his knees and strikes the then-famous death pose from the movie Platoon.

This game is filled with interesting advertisements, including a few animated ones, but it's easy to overlook what might be one of the most important in the whole game. This sign is in the stage 1 subways and seems to be an advertisement featuring the game's final boss. Check out the "Mission" screenshot in the gallery to see another closeup that matches this ad and the boss' sprites. This seems to be a newspaper or magazine ad that labels him as Mr. Lee. This hints towards the idea that he isn't really known as a criminal to the world at large. It's possible that he uses his legitimate businesses as a front for his illegal operations, much like Marvel's Kingpin (a.k.a. "The humble seller of spices.").

The street sign in stage three shows that the entire stage takes place on Trois street.
Screenshots (click to see full-sized):
Title Screen Mission Stage 2 Stage 5
ScrollBoss Section Links:
Sprites - Sprites
Custom Sprites - Crime Fighters gallery
Logos - Logo
Mini Logos - Crime Fighters mini-logo in Konami section

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