Techno Cop Amstrad CPC

Step into the future... technology has overtaken society - the rich are richer, the poor are poorer - chaos, unrest, destruction... lawlessness reigns, terror rules. But this is your territpry, your assignment with death. These are your streets and you have volunteered to clean out the scum, destroy the streetgangs and eliminate the deviants that pollute your city. Yes you have your beloved sleek racer, but armed with only a stun gun and keep net, what skills do you possess to neutralize the many hundreds who lie in wait for you? Being a cop is always dangerous, being a cop of the future is a step into the unknown. — Cassette cover

Techno Cop is a 1988 action video game for the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS and ZX Spectrum. It was subsequently ported to the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1990. The gameplay combines pseudo-3D driving in the graphical style of Outrun with side-scrolling action as the player controls a police officer driving to and then moved through various seedy locations in a one-man war against crime. The game was the first game on the Genesis to have a warning label due to its violent content.

The game was largely panned by video game critics for its simplistic graphics, sound, and the fact that many of the levels looked too similar.

Gameplay

In the single-player side-scrolling game the player is a cop in a seedy futuristic urban city. Armed with a pistol, the player has to kill various thugs, before the timer runs out. While the game has several levels, the background in the game does not change often.

The other half of the game is a driving sequence, similar to other computer games such as Roadblasters.

Techno Cop was one of the first games made for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis from a third party developer and was part of an attempt by Razorsoft to test what sort of content would Sega allow on a game made for one of its systems.