Raid 2020 (NES, 1989)

Time for what the pros refer to as a "shitty game". When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the 9mm Uzi for a bit. It's just a badass-looking gun. What's with the drugs though? I've never seen a prescription bottle with a poison sign on it, though in some cases that'd be a lot more honest.

Winners fight drugs? I hope you actually "fight drugs" in this game. Like one boss is a giant line of coke or something, on your quest to rescue the president who is a hovering crack pipe.

Sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends! ...Or not.

Well at least there wasn't a nuclear war like in Double Dragon II.

Unfortunately the people of this world lived only to face a new nightmare: Drug Overlord Pitbull.

"Mista Worl-wiiide! We gon' tear da roof off, ahahahaha! Dali."

For our first mission, we have to clear drug dealers off of the pier with our prosecutorial skills.

Well, here it is. Here's Raid 2020.

.......Good Lord.

This is a left-to-right scroller where you can move in and out of the foreground/background, like Double Dragon. Difference is you get a gun to blast bad guys with. Meanwhile, birds are dropping piles of bird poop on you, and the streets are full of these potholes that instantly kill you.

To imagine how mad this game makes you, picture how mad Star Wars fans got when the series added more female characters.

Here I am jumping over INSTA-DEATH POTHOLES while getting poop rained upon me by birds. I mean it's a dead giveaway right from the beginning that the game isn't well-designed when they put INSTA-DEATH POTHOLES in the very first hallway of the game. And with the angle being what it is, it's difficult to jump over them reliably.

Yeah, I'm not playing this. It's somehow less fun than Bebe's Kids and bordering on unplayable, though unlike Bebe's Kids at least this feels like the developers were trying.

So yeah...my playthrough of this game is done, finito. I don't want to just leave the post hanging or unfinished though. TO THE YOUTUBES so I can watch other people play it and take pictures. As a result, the rest of the post will be presented in Widescreen-O-Vision: The Wave of Tomorrow~!

So once you finally get off of the insta-death street, you end up in a warehouse. It looks like all of the powerups are up high for some reason, and you can't jump that high. So what gives? Well, turns out you have to RIDE ON BEES. That's right, these annoying bee enemies that fly around and damage you...can actually be jumped on and used as a platform to reach higher points.

Later in the level I get a jetpack.

"I've got my own way of being high, you drug-peddling losers!" said the screenshot caption in Nintendo Power.

I'm just kidding, this didn't get covered by Nintendo Power. They only covered reasonably decent games.

Here's a platform section from hell. Without the jetpack, this would be awful I'm sure. Check out these Atari-level graphics in 1989.

Reach the end of the level, and...wait! This game pulls a Prehistorik Man and makes you go back into the level if you missed something. In this case, you have to defeat every enemy in the stage before you can leave. Every last one. Even the bees! Also, there are some enemies that only appear the second time you visit a particular room, so even when you clear a room you can't be sure it's done.

FLYING HIGH! COO COO CACHOOOO!

After you finally get past Stage 1, it's time for a battle with Pitbull's helicopters.

"Oye Mami, Mista Worl-wiiide. Gotta tear da roof, on fiyaah"

Next up is a shitty jet-ski level. Even though it's difficult to make a jet-ski level not rad, they somehow accomplished it. Here you have to deal with a bunch of foes (like helicopters and crocodiles) that all move erratically and just kinda converge on your position immediately.

The worst part: The sharks. Are they on drugs too? Imagine a shark on meth.

...no, really, imagine what that might look like.

How do we know that Pitbull's chopper force are "evil"? Are the sharks evil too? What about all the bats? Starting to think that this Control person isn't on the up-and-up. Stop demonizing entire groups of people from your pulpit, Control. What are you, the news?

Next we go to...Pitbull's space station? My God. What better way to run drugs...than to do it in SPACE? You're outside of all international jurisdiction here, except Timecops.

Is that a gun store? At press time in November 2020, this Space Gun Store might be the only one that isn't sold out of ammo.

You end up getting this glider and zipping around blasting your foes. This game gets weird. It reminds me a bit of the original Ultima, which also couldn't decide what genre it belonged to. You start out fighting monsters in dungeons and by the end you're in space piloting a TIE fighter or something.

The Drug Satellite is our next foe, and it's heavily-armed? I don't even know what's goin' on.

Next up: Pitbull's Warehouse. Are we still in space?

After defeating everything in the warehouse, we end up at this organic-looking place. Are these someone's intestines? Why do these drug dealers look so happy to be here? Regardless, recreating the Pilgrimage of Lemmiwinks is something we should all aspire to, so our hero soldiers onward.

What even is this room? Are these cobwebs? What a nightmare. This really IS 2020.

There's one point where you need to use this random enemy as a stepping-stone to get to a key. I'll say this, they had some interesting ideas for this game. I'd still rank it above Bebe's Kids at least.

Finally, we need Pitbull's computer card to destroy his Drug Space Station. Like Skynet? I hope Harlan Ellison sued them for this.

Here's PITBULL HIMSELF. He...isn't what I expected.

"Obama wit no colah, Hillary wit no Beel. Iraq no war U.S. no Bush. Dali, boom-boom, tu quiere estar conmigo."

Yes, thank you, I agree.

What the powers that be didn't tell Shadow: The fight against drugs was no closer to being over, because it was a fight that wasn't designed to be won. Shadow then threw down his badge, like Crockett and Tubbs.

On the bright side, Pitbull is defeated forever. Thank God. Just...Thank God.

...OR IS HE?

"Yo lo que quiero es esa loca, dale dale loca!" he says when reached for comment.

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