Spy Hunter
| Spy Hunter | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Bally Midway |
| Publisher(s) | Bally Midway |
| Designer(s) | George Gomez |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release | 1983 |
| Genre(s) | Vehicular combat |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Spy Hunter is an arcade game made by Bally Midway and released in 1983. The player drives an armed sports car up a road that scrolls down the screen, shooting enemy vehicles, avoiding the civilian cars that share the road, and calling on a weapons van for oil slicks, smoke screens and missiles. It was designed by George Gomez.[1][2][3] The first game coded by Molecular Reality Corporation, Spyke Hunter, is named as a pun on it.
Gameplay
The car is a G-6155 Interceptor, which one account says was modeled after the 1983 Camaro Z28. A timer at the top of the screen counts down from 1,000. During that first stretch the player has unlimited cars, and the traffic is civilian. Destroying a civilian car stops the score counter for a while, and the weapons van then comes only once in each area.[3]
When the free time ends the enemies arrive. Midway's operating manual lists six: the bumper car, the tire slasher, the limo, the speedboat, the torpedo boat and the helicopter, worth 150, 150, 500, 150, 500 and 700 points.[4] The tire slasher has blades that come out of its wheels. Armored cars cannot be shot and must be forced off the road or left behind with a smoke screen or an oil slick. The limo pulls alongside and fires a shotgun, and the helicopter drops bombs. The weapons van drives up from time to time with new weapons or refills of old ones.[3] Part of the course is water, and the score rises for distance as well: 15 points for each quarter of a screen traveled on the road and 25 on the water.[4]
The game ends when every car is lost, and "GAME OVER" is written across the screen. The ten best scores are kept in a table.[4]
Controls and hardware
The player holds a steering yoke with five buttons, works a two-position shifter and presses an accelerator pedal on the floor.[2] The button that starts a game is the one labeled "WEAPONS VAN".[4] The manual covers two cabinets, a sit-down model, number 307, and an upright, number A27, with a 19-inch color monitor mounted vertically. One writer remembers that the sit-down cabinet was shaped like the car.[4][3] The board belongs to Midway's MCR III system.[2]
Development
According to the podcast Retronauts, Gomez set about making an original product after a license tie-in fell through.[1] The early versions of the game used the theme composed by Monty Norman for the James Bond films, but "because of copyright issues" Midway changed it to an arrangement of Henry Mancini's theme from the television series Peter Gunn. The theme plays only at the start and when the player gets a new weapon.[3]
Legacy
The title Spyke Hunter respells spike so that it begins with spy. In the company's usage a spike is the brief change in the current through a pore, and the game was written for the spikes that knots in a nylon filament make as they are drawn through a hole 2 mm wide. The founder, Kent Kemmish, introduced it in 2026 as "the unfortunately named 'Spyke Hunter', named because I was making a pun on 'Spy Hunter' (a 1980s arcade game)".[5] The game was never released.
See also
References
- ^ a b "Retronauts Episode 333: Tron & Spy Hunter with George Gomez". Retronauts. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c "Spy Hunter". Killer List of Videogames. International Arcade Museum. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e "Spy Hunter". Obsolete Gamer. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c d e "Spy Hunter: Parts and Operating Manual (game nos. 307 and A27)". Midway Mfg. Co. November 1983.
- ^ Kemmishtree (March 29, 2026). "Sequencing a string". EQBio-OS.