Judge Dredd is an interesting little oddity. Based on the long running 2000ad strip of the same name, the game begins as a scrolling beat 'em up in the Final Fight mold before switching to feature shoot 'em up and platforming stages as you progress. Doesn't that sound that interesting?
Fair enough, but here are two slightly better reasons: firstly, whilst it is available for MAME, the game was never actually released; getting cancelled after the prototype stage (on account of it being shit, probably, but we'll get to that). Secondly, it was developed by the now defunct Midway using the Mortal Kombat II (1993) engine and the 'digitised' graphical style of that series. This in turn brings to mind Atari's ill-advised, dinosaur themed fart 'em up Primal Rage (1994), which helped put the 'digitised' graphics fad to bed.
I'll be the first to admit that it's a bit harsh to lay into an unreleased prototype, but considering the amount of cash that must have been spent creating it, I can't imagine that the final product would have been up to much. The graphical style is a sickly blend of early '90s CGI and character sprites created from photographs of actors in costume (with a special mention going out to the poor sod playing Judge Dredd himself, presumably an out-of-work actor forced to wear a ridiculous prosthetic chin and a metal chicken on his shoulder).
As a big fan of Dredd, I can attest that the character designs and roster of baddies are pretty accurate, so no complaints there. The problem is just that everything looks so… cheap. The quality of animation doesn't help: Dredd struts around swinging his arms back and forth like a toddler that's been asked to impersonate a robot, and most of the enemies crab walk across the screen like they've soiled themselves. These allegedly 'photo-realistic' graphics always gave the Mortal Kombat series a sort of playable B-movie feel, which was entirely appropriate for the story and the style of gameplay. On that logic, surely Judge Dredd should strive to feel or look like a comic? Except that it doesn't – and instead it's a kind of gaudy plasticine mess featuring waves of lazily palette swapped enemies.
As far as the mechanics of the thing go, it plays about as well as it looks. Furthermore, if it wasn't for the shooting stages, this choice of genre would make no sense whatsoever. Why would Judge Dredd, well known for shooting people that drop litter, suddenly decide to take on all street-level crime using just his fists?
The controls are stiff and unresponsive. Poor old Dredd has a pretty arthritic looking punch, kick and flying kick on the first beat 'em up stage, none of which have much range or do a great deal of damage. Luckily, that's balanced out by a number of fairly stupid and weak enemies, though in fairness there are some opponents with projectile weapons and some more varied attacks are leveled at you as you progress. Lastly, if in doubt, you can do a sort of silly looking crouch move for no reason whatsoever.
Once you've completed the fighting stage, you enter a sort of Duck Hunt style bonus level which takes place in what I assume is a futuristic firing range – but might be a haunted branch of LazerQuest. I assume that this section would have been controlled with the joystick had the game ever made it to the arcades as it hardly seems worthy of a dedicated lightgun peripheral, and it's all pretty stiff on a USB gamepad let alone a proper arcade joystick. This section is also an excuse to reuse a number of the enemy sprites with an added green tint, but since this is a prototype I'm sure we can gloss over this little bit of corner cutting.
Finally, you end up in a Contra (1987) style shooting stage that is outrageously difficult, but at least actually lets you use your gun rather than just punching everything. A slightly shrunken version of the same Dredd sprite has to navigate a number of platforms whilst using his comparatively weedy gun against every badly designed robot, ceiling mounted turret and flying green… thing in the fucking universe. I'm not kidding, this level is way too hard. The whole section sticks out like a sore thumb, and it feels much more like something you'd find on a home console than in an arcade. It completely lacks that sense of grandeur that made playing games in the arcade worth spending your pocket money. I imagine that Midway may have settled on one style of gameplay for the final product and simply tried out everything they could for this prototype to see what would stick. Whatever the reason for this scattergun approach, I'd rather have paid 50p to be disappointed by the beat 'em up level than made to suffer a difficulty-induced aneurysm by the platforming one.
A bit of credit has to be given for including a multiplayer co-op mode, but frankly that's something of a given for this sort of thing. I actually got the most fun out of the sound design; every time you use a credit and your newly revived character drops back into the game, he loudly announces his name as if forced to do so at gunpoint: "JUDGE DREDD!". Thanks to the miracle of MAME you can rack up a few credits then mash all four 'player start' buttons in rapid succession and make the game scream: "JUDGE DREDD! JUDGE DREDD! JUDGE DREDD! JUDGE DREDD!". That is genuinely the best part of the game.
