Developed and published by Access Software in 1990, Crime Wave is a side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter for MS-DOS that uses digitised graphics for the backgrounds, sprites, and cut scenes. Crime Wave – it has to be said – looks and plays like a clone of Williams Electronics‘ 1989 arcade game, Narc, which it almost certainly is.

You play a cop, called Luke McCabe, who is on the trail of a criminal gang who have kidnapped the President’s daughter. This gang is led by an arch criminal mastermind, called the “King Pin“, who McCabe has vowed to take down.

McCabe has two weapons: a shotgun, which can be powered-up by collecting guns that drop out of thin air (literally), and he also has a rocket launcher, which explodes enemies into spinning body parts. He can pick up additional ammo for his weapons, as well as collecting dirty money and drugs, dropped by the criminals, for a bonus at the end of the game.

There’s a health bar at the side of the screen, and a life counter, and you obviously lose a life whenever your health runs out. Depending on the difficulty level played (there are three), extra lives can be picked-up to keep McCabe going, and these are needed if you have any hope of completing the game, because avoiding enemy fire is almost impossible. McCabe can duck and jump, but neither of these offer much in terms of evading damage.

Crime Wave features fairly substandard ‘walk-and-gun’ gameplay, punctuated by hilariously bad comic book-style cut scenes. The over-the-top action could’ve been fun, but the game is hampered by things like not being able to shoot upward (at enemies that are shooting down on you); not being able to shoot when walking up and down; not being able to jump forwards or backwards (only vertically upward); crouching not avoiding enemy fire; not being able to run, and repetitive, unsophisticated enemies.

The ‘Game Over’ text when you lose your last life is pretty much indicative of the overall quality of Crime Wave: it’s poor. I get that Access was playing for laughs with this game, but rather than laughing with it, we’re laughing at it. Crime Wave is badly-written, badly presented, and dumb on every level.

More: Crime Wave on Moby Games
More: Access Software on Wikipedia