The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - S.P.Y.: Special Project Y
Konami’s spy action game plays like a co-op beat ‘em up got mixed up with Space Harrier, and it's a ton of fun!
RELEASE DATE: 1989
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Konami
BEST VERSIONS: Arcade
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Highly playable
It’s always interesting when two developers release similar games around the same time, and such was the case with just the titles for Data East’s Sly Spy: Secret Agent and Konami’s slightly more complex S.P.Y.: Special Project Y. Data East’s game is very accessible and fun to play even today. Konami’s is a bit baffling and is mostly redeemed by its co-operative play and shooting gallery segments. But both games are based on the same basic idea of a James Bond-style agent infiltrating an enemy compound, both have enemies flying around with jetpacks, both have bosses based on Bond villains and both have you fighting bad guys in a missile silo. Both even have an ending where you wind up with a bunch of pretty girls. The difference is really in the execution.
S.P.Y.: Special Project Y starts off with a message on your secret spy watch warning you that a nuclear launch is imminent, and then immediately rockets you off into a pseudo-3D battle over the ocean as you fly towards the evil villain’s island base, eventually culminating in a battle with a helicopter. The game doesn’t bother you with any details about who you’re fighting or why; even the promotional flyer is vague about the names of the characters and the purpose of your mission. It’s possible, as HardcoreGaming101 posits out in their write-up, that this was intended to be a licensed game and the deal fell through at some point. But it doesn’t really matter; S.P.Y. doesn’t give you a lot of time to worry about why you’re doing anything because so much of the game just involves shooting everything in sight.
Part of what makes S.P.Y. so interesting is that the game is constantly changing its mechanics on you. On the island, you start out in a side-scrolling beat ‘em up mode where you progress through a war-torn city and either pummel or shoot everyone you meet. You reach the gates of a mansion, only to have a helicopter drop off two boss characters. Once they’re defeated, the action shifts to a pseudo-3D shooting gallery where you run down the lane and blast enemies, dogs and vehicles with guns and rockets you pick up along the way. After another boss battle in this mode, you return to the beat ‘em mode to fight through the mansion itself, but this leads to a level in the vein of Rolling Thunder where you ascend a cliffside base by leaping up to platforms above you. Once you’re inside, the action shifts again to a pseudo-3D corridor shootout sort of reminiscent of Contra’s interior sequences, but with turns every now and then. You then ascend a missile silo level, fight a villain who looks suspiciously like Jaws from the James Bond movies, and reach the main villain, who’s hiding behind a forcefield and…
…rockets off in his easy chair, taunting you for trying to bust him.
Inexplicably, S.P.Y. then makes you play the entire thing over again, from the approach to the island all the way through the battle with the Jaws lookalike. But this time, the general stays to fight. Fortunately, he goes down easily, and the game ends with your hero parachuting onto a boat filled with girls in swimsuits. There’s no epilogue text to explain what happened, nor any attempt to thank you for playing the game through twice. But even with the incoherent story and the pointless repetition midway through, S.P.Y. is a fairly fun game since it never sticks with one set of mechanics long enough to get boring and allows you to bring a friend along as the second player. There’s an impressive amount of destruction, and the initial boss fight with a helicopter over the moving ocean waters looks great for a game from 1989.
Unfortunately, Konami has done nothing to make S.P.Y.: Secret Agent available outside of its arcade incarnation, and pretty much the only way to play it today is through arcade emulation with a copy of the game ROM. Hopefully, we’ll see it re-released one day through HAMSTER Corporation’s Arcade Archives. Until then, an emulator like MAME is probably your best bet.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!