 Siiiiiiiiiiiiinn... Rust Truck! Chase HQ is a fantastic game developed by Taito for the Arcades back in 1988 gaining popularity at the time because it seemed like the natural continuation of games like Out Run or like Taito's earlier effort Full Throttle because the emphasis in Chase HQ isn't just racing, it's utter destruction and chaos. You play as a police officer Tony Gibson and you along with your partner Raymond Brody chase after criminals and basically just pound their fleeing vehicles into submission. In addition to that, Chase HQ also produced some of the all-time great arcade posters you will ever see. I mean, look at this. Evidently, we've got Ryan Gosling from the movie Drive, only with a beard and aviators. Chasing either Billy Dee Williams or Lionel Richie, while some guy wearing a Michael Myers mask is involved? And this one is even better. I mean, come on. That is clearly Harrison Ford, ripped straight from a Star Wars poster, given a mustache and a huge mop of 70's hair, and the guy on the right again has a Billy Dee Williams vibe. So, like all our arcade hits at the time, Chase HQ received a port to absolutely everything. Not only the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST, but even the Famicom, Master System, TurboGrafx 16, and the freakin' Game Boy. Wow. Naturally, the game received a couple sequels, the first titled Special Criminal Investigation. Another port situation there, but without a goofy Game Boy port sadly. And another sequel, Super Chase Criminal Termination. Okay, these titles are starting to sound like they're just picking words out of a hat. This is the one that Taito decided to port to the Super Nintendo, titled Super Chase HQ, not to be confused with Chase HQ on the Sega Genesis, which is based on the first game. But yeah, Super Chase HQ has the same kind of gameplay as the arcade, with B to accelerate Y to break and A to use one of three nitros, you get each level, with each of the five missions here, featuring a criminal that you have to catch up to, and turn their vehicle into a pile of flaming wreckage. Unlike the other home console ports up until this point, Super Chase HQ plays from a first person perspective, complete with a rear view mirror where you can see your character's face change expression, which is a nice touch. You just have to dodge what's in front of you, catch up to the criminal, and uh, yeah, beat up their car with your car, basically, before your car's health meter runs out. Again, the little touches here like seeing the damage to your own hood is a really nice touch. They do the best they can trying to spice this game up with the story as well. The game starts out with you chasing this guy, what is that, Andrew Dice Clay? Then you get a helpful assistant named Nancy, who gives you all the details of the criminal you're chasing. You have a time limit to try and catch up to him, so it's important to use the nitros right away, so you have enough time to do as much damage as you can. Otherwise, the game makes you use a continue, the criminal gets away, and you have to chase them down again. Thankfully, their health meter stays the same. You do only get one continue per level, however. But yeah, the story continues from mission to mission, including gangs, bribes, kidnappings, all that ridiculous 90's stuff you'd usually see in beat-em-ups. The presentation here is pretty good. The voice samples are pretty impressive. The backgrounds and different settings are well done, and as a whole, this game is as well as you could expect a home console port to be. The problem with that is, well, this is what the arcade game looked like, and you were usually playing it in something that looked like this, and drove with a steering wheel with two loud ass speakers behind you blaring in your ears and the screen like one foot from your face. And in 1993, it just was not possible to replicate this kind of experience at home. I think the closest you could probably come was the Sega Genesis ports of the afterburner games. Those are still a blast to play through. But with Super Chase HQ, I mean, this is one of those games that's all style because the gameplay here is seriously just ram the other car into submission. You go as fast as you can and dodge whatever gets in your way. You catch up to the guy and then you just beat up the car. There's no weapons. There's not much strategy. There's no targeting, no aiming, or any of that. There are missions where there might be more than one target, but again, it's just ram your car into them. I will say the third mission at least makes it really tough to dodge stuff since it's a two-way street, but the basic gameplay stays the same. The difficulty also gets absurd the further you progress. I mean, there's a freaking helicopter in my face shooting at me, and I have no defense against it. The hell is that? It's one other thing I need to point out, and the music here is pretty good, but when you get close to the criminal, the music gets tuned out, and all you hear is a siren. Come on, man, this is where you gotta blast that boss theme. What were they thinking here? I do have to mention very quickly that there is also a Game Boy version of Super Chase HQ, and it just never ceases to amaze me how there's seemingly a Game Boy port of everything. But unfortunately, this one doesn't attempt a first-person perspective or anything like that. It's just the typical combat racing game where you dodge stuff. Kinda cute, but ultimately pretty boring. So yeah, Super Chase HQ is one of the best examples in the Super Nintendo library of a game that's purely a product of its time. This was simply the best home port of an arcade game, a perfectly capable developer like Taito was able to put together. And at the time it was released, I'm sure it was passable. Now, it really gets boring and repetitive after like five minutes. I really wish this game had some weapons or a little more variety because the window dressing here, so to speak, is really good. The environments, the voice samples, the little touches here and there are great. It's just tough to recommend this one because the gameplay is so one-dimensional. With the arcade game, when you're sitting there in the cabinet, one-dimensional doesn't matter because you're just getting blasted and overwhelmed with the sheer speed and volume of the game. But unfortunately, you can't say that about the Super Nintendo port. Ultimately, it's a passable port, but passable ain't gonna cut it if you wanna play it today. Alright, I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.