ESWAT: City Under Siege

About ESWAT: City Under Siege

ESWAT: City Under Siege (1990) is Sega's Shinobi-style Genesis platformer in which rookie officer Duke Oda earns a powered ICE Combat Suit to fight the terrorist organisation E.Y.E.

ESWAT: City Under Siege in Depth

In the near future, Duke Oda is a rookie in the Cyber Police of the city of Liberty, tasked with cleaning up an overwhelming crime wave and taking down the most wanted criminals. In the first two levels he has only a single-shot weapon and dies on his second hit. When a mysterious, high-tech terrorist organisation called E.Y.E. threatens to take over the city, he is promoted at the end of the second level and given power armour, the ICE Combat Suit.

The suit unlocks more lethal weapons if Duke finds them: the Super Shot, a plasma rifle, rockets and a devastating fire attack, along with a jet pack whose limited fuel refills over time. It lets him take more damage, but makes him bigger and harder to keep out of the way of enemy attacks. The final boss, E.Y.E.'s leader, turns out to be an artificially intelligent robot trying to copy the ICE Combat Suit to conquer Liberty. The console game keeps the arcade original's main characters, plot and some enemies, but has different levels, weapons and bonuses. MegaTech called it "a super slick shoot-'em-up that simply oozes quality", praising its parallax backgrounds, sprites and sound.

Making ESWAT: City Under Siege

Sega developed and published it for the Genesis and Master System in 1990. Raze gave it 72 per cent, praising its detailed backgrounds and voice recordings but finding it too easy and repetitive, Mega Action gave 81 per cent despite "dated" graphics, and Console XS gave 84 out of 100, calling it "challenging" and "addictive".