Elevator Action

Elevator Action
Arcade flyer featuring the cocktail table version of the game and in-game screenshots.
Developer(s)	Taito Corporation
Publisher(s)	Taito Corporation
Composer(s)	Yoshio Imamura
Platforms	Arcade
Release date(s)	1983
Genre(s)	Action, Platform game
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players
Cabinet	Upright
Display	Raster, standard resolution 256 x 224 (Horizontal), 64 colors

Elevator Action (エレベーターアクション, Erebētā Akushon) is a 1983 arcade game by Taito Corporation.

The player assumes the role of a spy infiltrating a 30-story building filled with elevators. The player is pursued by enemy agents who appear from behind closed doors. These agents must be dealt with via force or evasion. Successful completion of a level involves collecting all the secret documents and traversing the building from top to bottom. In the lower floors of the building, the elevator systems can be complex enough that puzzle-solving skills are needed. The controls consist of a 4-way joystick and two buttons, one to shoot and the other for jumping and kicking.

Elevator Action was followed by the arcade game Elevator Action Returns in 1994 (released as Elevator Action II in North America) and Elevator Action EX for the Game Boy in 2000.

Gameplay

Screenshot of Elevator Action

The player assumes the role of Agent 17, codename: "Otto", a secret agent for an unspecified organization or government. As Otto, the player enters a 30-story building from the roof and must collect a series of secret documents hidden inside. Red doors indicate the location of these documents, and Otto must use the building's elevators and escalators to reach them while avoiding or defeating the enemy agents trying to stop him. Each of the red doors has a doormat, which Otto must stand atop in order to access the room. Once accessed, the red door becomes a blue door like the rest of the building's doors, and a short tune plays denoting Otto has acquired the document and is awarded 500 points. Enemy agents randomly emerge from blue doors. Once Otto has all the documents, he must reach the basement and escape in a waiting car to advance (and scoring 1,000 points times the level completed). Each level contains a section in which the lights are out, making it difficult to see the enemy agents unless they are in an elevator. Beyond this section, the player must navigate a complex series of elevators to avoid agents, retrieve the last documents, and reach the basement exit.

Otto can move left or right and jump; when in an elevator or at one end of an escalator, pushing up or down will move him one floor in that direction, however, pushing down will not cause Otto to drop to a knee while in an elevator. He can fire his pistol at enemy agents, up to three rounds at a time, and drop to a knee to avoid enemy agents' high shots when not in an elevator. In addition, Otto can ride on top of an elevator car (but not have control of it) and, if the car is above him, jump across the empty shaft. He can defeat enemy agents in four ways: shooting them, getting close enough to jump at and kick them, shooting out an overhead light so that it falls on them (which temporarily knocks out the building lights), or crushing them with a moving elevator.

On higher levels, the enemy agents will shoot more frequently and their bullets will travel faster. They will drop to a knee or assume a prone position to avoid Otto's shots, but cannot jump over low bullets. If the player takes too much time, indicated by a hurry-up alarm sound and sped-up background music, the enemy agents become more aggressive and the elevators become slow to respond to the player's joystick movements. If the player tries to use the basement exit without collecting every document, Otto will be automatically transported back to the highest floor that still has an unopened red door. If the player proceeds to the basement garage with all the secret documents, Otto will jump into the car and a brief scene will be shown where he drives the car through the garage, then outdoors, while spelling out the number of bonus points in exhaust fumes akin to skywriting. The player would be advanced to the next stage, which was often denoted by different colored wallpaper than the former.

A port to the original Game Boy includes the ability to acquire different weapons, such as a machine gun that fires more rapidly.

Ports and re-releases

Elevator Action was ported to the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, and Sega SG-1000. Sony published a mobile version of the game. On March 5, 2007, the NES port of Elevator Action was released on the Wii's Virtual Console.

A port was planned for the Atari 2600, but never released. However, a prototype of the game was illegally published by CGE Services Corp. and sold at Classic Gaming Expo 2001.

A remake of the game by Square Enix, titled Elevator Action Deluxe, was released on PlayStation Network on August 31, 2011. The game contains single player and multiplayer modes, as well as the original arcade version.

The original Elevator Action has been included in various compilations, including:

• Elevator Action EX (Game Boy Color)
• Elevator Action Old & New (Game Boy Advance)
• Elevator Action Returns (Sega Saturn, PlayStation 2)
• Taito Legends (PlayStation 2, Xbox, Windows)
• Taito Legends Power Up (PSP)
• Elevator Action Deluxe (PlayStation Network)

Legacy

Two games for Palm OS, Agent Z and its sequel, Agent Z 2 by Ellams Software, are based on Elevator Action. Dexter's Laboratory: Robot Rampage! released for Game Boy Color in 2000, is based on Elevator Action II.

Revealed at AOU 2009, Elevator Action: Death Parade is a lightgun shooter that uses elevator doors when changing scenarios.

A game titled Elevator Action Episode-ZERO (エレベーターアクション Episode-ZERO) was released for mobile phones on 2009 in Japan.

In popular culture

The title of the dojin game ElePaper Action is a parody of Elevator Action's title. The game's credits sequence features a mini-game similar to Elevator Action. Some chapters in the Hellsing manga are named Elevator Action. The "Nintendo punk" band 14 Year Old Girls did a song about this game, titled "Elevator Action". The game was referenced in the Shinsetsu Bobobo manga's first chapter, as the name of an attack used during an elevator scene.

See also

• Door Door

External links

• Elevator Action at World of Spectrum
• Elevator Action at the Killer List of Videogames
• Elevator Action NES review at X-Entertainment
• High Score Rankings for Elevator Action from Twin Galaxies