Maximum Force is the ‘spiritual successor’ to Atari Games‘ hit lightgun shooter, Area 51. It was developed by Mesa Logic (the same company who made Area 51) and features the same style of gameplay and graphics – pre-rendered backgrounds and environments; fixed, on-rails camera movement, and shot-on-video digitised characters. The game was first released into arcades in 1997 and caters for one or two players.

The aim is to basically take on a variety of missions to stop the nondescript, laughable ‘bad guys’ from doing ‘bad things’ – by shooting the crap out of them. You’re actually an unnamed counter-terrorist agent, but the game never explains that. And once again you have to avoid shooting innocent bystanders by mistake.

In the first mission you infiltrate a terrorist ship, then find and destroy their munitions bunker and recover some plutonium they stole. In the second mission you have to stop a bank robbery in progress, and in the third mission (which must be unlocked by completing the first two missions) you’re in the jungle and must destroy a chemical lab and take down the cartel behind it.

While I can forgive Area 51 for being dated and cheesy, Maximum Force takes the cheesiness to a whole ‘nother level. Three things really ‘got me’ about this game. Firstly, the acting is atrocious. Not just the bikini-clad ‘hostages’ looking puzzled and scared in the middle of a warzone, but the way enemies jump into a scene is just ridiculous as well. They look like kids playing at war… And I can’t really blame the actors for this – it’s the director’s fault. Secondly, the camera is really out of control in this game. In some scenes the camera is flying all over the place, which wasn’t the case in Area 51 (which kept the camera movement relatively realistic). In this it feels like you’re Superman, flying anywhere you want, including fifty feet in the air, along the side of a building, as you shoot enemies on rooftops… And thirdly: the gibs, when you shoot an enemy, are also poorly done. Granted, the gibs were also crap in Area 51, but I was hoping they’d maybe ironed that out in Maximum Force. But no…

You get an accuracy rating after each segment and are awarded and deducted points accordingly. Reloading is done by shooting off-screen, and your remaining lives are shown by the golden skulls in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. If you’re shot the screen cracks in exactly the same way as in Area 51, and if you lose all your lives you can put in more credits to continue where you left off.

Like Area 51, Maximum Force was a failure among critics, but was a commercial success in arcades. Which is surprising because – even at release – the game was looking dated among the many polygon-based 3D games that were beginning to dominate.

Maximum Force and Area 51 were re-released as a combination arcade cabinet in 1998. Home ports of Maximum Force were also released for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in ’97 and ’98 respectively.

More: Maximum Force on Wikipedia