Reviews

Having painfully played Moonwalker the other day I felt it was time to look at another movie licensed game from Emerald Software, yes because Moonwalker was a movie, a loose one but still it's a movie. Here we have The Running Man, a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger who plays the role of the “Butcher of Bakersfield” Ben Richards as he participates in America's most dangerous game, The Running Man. While it isn't really one of Arnie's most standout films it's still memorable and enjoyable, but this game however? Well, it's a shambles and really what did you expect? In this game nothing works, not the kicking, not the punching, not the jumping and not the running, nothing. You spend more time being knocked over by a dog and falling down holes more than anything, so by the time you reach the first stalker, which I assume is Professor Sub-Zero because he carries a hockey stick, your energy is nearly completely sapped. What chance do you have with such pathetic jumping and fighting? And so Emerald have provided yet another stinker of a movie licensed game, but really were we expecting anything else?

And now I'd like to close this review with one of the more famous lines from the film. “Hey Killian, here is Sub-Zero, now, PLAIN Zero.” Which is precisely the score this debacle of a game deserves.

1989 Grandslam Entertainments (UK)
by Fran Heeran, Bobby Healy, Jonathan Broggy and Mark Cushen

Ouch! This IS bad!
Based upon Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with the same, the Running Man, makes me wanna just run away from it!
From the opening scenes which are awful, (expect the fall), to the game itself, the game is badly executed in almost every aspect. Graphically it's mediocre, if not just bad, no color added whatsoever, the characters look clumsy and the gameplay which could be at least ordinary like so many side scrolling games out there, is just awkward and finally boring. Sorry if I'm being harsh, but I would be lying if I said otherwise.

This Schwarznegger licence is evern worse than Red Heat.
1,5/5

Red Heat wasn't a good game, it was a bad game, but it wasn't a terrible game. This however is atrocious. The only thing worth talking about in this game is the "I'll be back" sampled speech and that only lasts a second, everything else is dire.

The Running Man game is based on film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger which in turn is based on a Stephen King book.

Here Arnold Schwarzenegger portrays a character named Ben Richards, aka The Butcher of Bakersfield, who is framed for the Bakersfield Massacre, where hundreds of civilians were killed during a rally. During his escape from police custody he is discovered by television host Damon Killian, who is played by the late Richard Dawson, who as a presenter was most famous for hosting Family Feud, the US version of Family Fortunes. Killian wants Richards to participate in his hit game show The Running Man, where criminals are chosen to compete and have to run, fight and survive through a series of professional killers, known as stalkers, including Professor Subzero, Dynamo and Fireball.

The movie I particularly enjoy, but the game though does it very little justice.

It does feature an ok intro with a pretty nice “I'll Be Back” speech, but it is played with music which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t relate to the film.

While the intro can be seen as passible, the gameplay is a major letdown. The jump is appalling and the punch is absolutely useless. Most of the time you’re punching in thin air without doing any damage to your opponent. So you are better off kicking your opponents instead, and especially dogs, because kicking a dog replenishes your health, only in computer games.

I find that the game isn’t truly that bad, the fighting is alright as long as you kick your opponent rather than punch him. However, getting your way through the level is the main chore of the game because of his jump, the level design and the randomness of the dogs.

It's worth pointing out also that the graphics are not that great as well as there is no hint the characters in the game are even from the movie, because it looks nothing like them, especially the stalkers. But you would think that being a licensed game an attempt would have been made to make the main sprite look a little bit like Arnold but it doesn’t.

The Running Man is not completely terrible, I found it to be a little more playable than I expected and compared to others, but it is still a pretty bad game and it is safe to say the movie is much, much better. I am just thankful I got this in a compilation with three better games included along with it.