This handheld run-and-gun/beat ’em up hybrid was obviously made to parody the character of Dirty Harry, as portrayed by Clint Eastwood in the films. It was developed by Knight Technologies and published for the Atari Lynx in North America and PAL regions in 1992.

As a scrolling action game, it’s not too bad. I’ve seen worse. There’s very little nuance, but at least the game is playable – unlike the awful Batman Returns for the Lynx; a similar game, but seriously lacking in playability.

Larry has a health bar, a gun, and can punch with his fists. He can duck, but this seems useless as it does not avoid enemy fire. Meaning that you have to jump over bullets instead, and use your limited bullets to take out enemies quickly, before they damage you too much. Larry can, of course, collect extra ammo, which is occasionally dropped by defeated enemies. Later in the game, other weapons become available, like the machine gun, and grenades. Pressing the A button cycles through these, with the B button being fire.

The graphics in Dirty Larry are okay. The various enemies are relatively unimaginative, and the scrolling backdrops were old hat, even back in 1992. There are seven levels in total, although some repeat (which is total BS), so in reality there are only four different levels.

Overall, Dirty Larry: Renegade Cop is fairly lame as run-and-gun shooters go. Imagine if the Lynx had a run-and-gun game like Super Contra, instead of this… Now that would be something worth celebrating.

Thank you to The Almighty Guru for his Dirty Larry cheat codes!

More: Dirty Larry on Wikipedia