Working together to bust crime lord Big Cigar, our heroes throw out police procedure in favor of chasing baddies on roadways and shooting at their cars until they pull over. The heroes may bear a vague semblance to Ryu and Ken at first, but they are more likely modelled off of the buddy cop film Tango & Cash, starring Sylvester Stallone as Tango (Lucky) and Kurt Russell as Cash (Wild). The premise sees the eponymous detectives – the smooth and well-dressed Lucky, and the rugged long-haired Wild – take on gang leaders through six stages. Lucky & Wild wasn’t just an arcade shooter, but also a police pursuit/action movie simulator. Namco is certainly no stranger to lightgun games, as evidenced by the prior Steel Gunner and the later Point Blank and Time Crisis. Standing within the crossover zone between a Venn diagram of “Cop Shooting” and “Cop Driving” is Lucky & Wild, a product of the same illustrious nineties Namco period that gave us Exvania and the Outfoxies. Before any of the above, Taito had a modest success with Chase HQ, which is like OutRun plus ramming criminals’ cars until they break down. Lethal Enforcers and Virtua Cop made two-player criminal blasting a staple of arcades, and Policenauts is basically Space Lethal Weapon. The basic formula of “loose cannon cop and no-nonsense detective fight crime together” not only made for some great cinema, but this premise influenced multiple games. With the successes of 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon, the buddy cop film genre was thriving in the eighties and nineties.
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