Description Jail Break - MAME

Jail Break is an 8-directional isometric platformer, which puts the player into the role of a police officer and—obviously—takes place during a massive jailbreak, with the convicts running rampant through the city and wreaking havoc. The player’s task is simple: eliminate all the escaped convicts and—if possible—rescue the defenseless civilians from their hands. Now, the controls are clunky and the game is incredibly hard—for you see, the player’s character, the police officer mentioned above, has a nasty tendency to get in the way of enemy fire (and even if he for once manages to escape with his sloppy running skills, he just usually dies just a moment later upon contact with an unarmed NPC because the game did not register you pressing the fire button in time)—but… but… it’s also incredibly catchy and addictive at the same time, and even though your joystick might get some free yet unwanted flying lessons, you are still going to come back for more. As I’ve already mentioned, in Jail Break, you can move in eight directions (left and right, back and forth + combinations of both). That might be confusing at first, but if you ever played games like AvP or Final Fight, you should get it under your skin pretty soon, I guess. The controls layout itself is pretty simple, actually: an eight-way joystick (arrow keys at default) plus two buttons (MAME button 1 for attack and button 2 for switching between the acquired weapons—more about this below). Your default weapon is a (presumably) nine millimeter handgun (presumably PD standard issue), but don’t worry, you’ll get your hands on much cooler weapons as you play, such as bazooka and a grenade launcher. You obtain these by saving the civilians you every now and then encounter in the streets (just walk into them, really). Keep in mind though that if you die you’re back to square one with your nine only; and should you—god forbid—hit one of them (the civilians), you’ll lose one of the obtained weapons for each killed civilian (and if you have a nine only, you ask? well, what do you think? yes, that’s a score penalty for you, you incompetent fool!). Now as to the audiovisual aspect of the game, well, it’s exactly what would one expect when booting up a vintage arcade game from 1986. Nothing too awful but nothing too sweet as well. Thankfully, what Jail Break lacks in visuals and sounds is heavily outweighed by the fun gameplay. Because let’s face it, unless you’ve been an ACAB type from the moment you left your mom’s uterus, there sure was at least a single moment in your life where you were like: damn, aren’t those police guys cool! And let’s be all frank and admit it, there is a part in every one of us, manly men, that makes us like everything with sirens and flashing lights and guns and… you get the idea… And that’s like all I got to say to Jailbreak, folks, have fun!