Prison City [Review]
Actioner Prison City is an authentic 8-bit blast from the past.
Drop John Carpenter’s Escape from New York along with classic game series Contra and Mega Man in a blender and you’ll get Programancer’s and Retroware’s Prison City, an action-packed side-scrolling shooter rich with action game and movie references.
Detroit was evacuated in 1995 and turned into a prison city. In 1997, retired cop Hal Bruzer (the player) is sent in to take back control from Techno-Terrorists that have seized the prison. Does this plot sound familiar? That familiarity with action movie and game tropes is part of the fun, and Prison City’s intended audience of NES kids should feel right at home.
Prison City plays like Contra. It’s a fast paced run-and-gun game with respawning enemies. Hal shoots forwards by default, but the player can hold the shoulder buttons or the up and down buttons to shoot in a total of 8 directions. Hal’s shots are actually short range boomeranging chakrams, the only weapon in the game. It can be upgraded by finding three upgrade items, and gets downgraded again after being hit three times. Aside from that, you can hold a single screen-killer grenade. Shooting feels good but lacks variety. If there were alternative weapons, or a multi-phased upgrade system a-la Gradius, combat would be more interesting.
The player can hang from pipes and chain-linked fences like in Super Contra, and Prison City adds the ability to hang onto ledges as well to give the platforming more flexibility. Hal also has a sliding move like Mega Man’s (starting in Mega Man 3) at his disposal to get through tight spaces or grant a short burst of speed. The controls are tight and precise; there’s no floatiness to the movement and it feels great to play.
The game’s structure and level design is most similar to Mega Man. Like in Capcom’s famous platformer, the game opens with a level select screen featuring eight levels arranged around a central empty space. Levels can be tackled in any order. Each has a unique biome with varied obstacles, enemies, and bosses. The player has to find an agent holding a keycard hidden somewhere in the level and then a door leading to one of the game’s excellent, varied boss fights. Unlike Mega Man, levels have branching paths, allowing for more exploration to accommodate the two goals. I think the exploration is an interesting idea that brings a bit more freshness to a faithfully 8-bit game like this one.
Once all eight levels are completed, the center stage opens up. This one is structured like Dr. Wily’s lair in Mega Man, as a series of levels that combine and expand on elements from the previous levels to really test your mastery of the game. While some of the initial levels are harder than others, the difficulty really spikes in this last area. I ended up playing the game in easy mode; it’s breezy by comparison and still ends up challenging at the end.
I loved the look of this game. The graphics are in an 8-bit style and from what I could tell respect the limitations of NES tiled graphics, both in the sprites and in the backgrounds. There’s certainly more going on in the game than what the NES could support but it still feels like an authentic retro experience that I could have played at the height of that classic console’s lifespan. The feeling of authenticity is pushed over the edge by Prison City’s excellent soundtrack; it sounds like it’s coming straight out of the NES hardware’s monophonic synths and noise channel.
Prison City is perfect for retro game enthusiasts like me. Once I finished the game, short if not for its difficulty, I felt like I’ll eventually return to it when I need a dose of that NES goodness. What’s here is solid, but an uneven difficulty curve, short length, and lack of weapon variety keep it from being truly great.
Prison City is available now on PC via Steam / Epic, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One / Series X|S, and PlayStation (PS4 and PS5) .
