Dendy Memories #3: Robocop 3

Hello!
Greetings to all fans of the Dendy console, and welcome to my kitchen,
the place of the most pleasant old school memories,
where everyone wouldn't mind to play Dendy and recall everything about it.
Like before, I'll be talking about one of my favorite Dendy games,
sharing my memories of beating it for first time.
In the previous Dendy Memories episode I told you about Darkwing Duck from this 7-in-1 cartridge.
Today I'll continue talking about this cartridge with a game that is third in the list there.
I first played the game on this cartridge, and beat it for first time there as well.
As you can guess, this is a game about a brave robotic limb of the law, the Robocop 3.
Robocop 3 for Dendy is notable not only with how good the game is,
and not only for being a part of the great 7-in-1 that many of us played.
From early days, the 1990s, most gamers had probably
remembered it not only for the graphics and gameplay.
Many also associate it, which is an unusual thing for a game, with this thing.
This is an usual Compact Cassette, Intersonic AD-60.
They were really common in 1980s and 1990s.
Special thing there is the label.
'Robocop - Eis Ov Beis'
What the heck does this mean, would you ask?
Well, that is how I transcribed name of the Ace of Base band in 1995,
those music was recorded on a side of the tape.
The Robocop label here is because...
The same year we, with my older brother Vitaly,
first started the Robocop 3 game on the 7-in-1 cartridge.
We were simply amazed when we heard the wonderful song that plays at the title screen.
Many times we were turning on the game just to hear the song again.
Around the time we got an opportunity to record the song on a tape.
Our parents bought a dual cassette deck I-Star, a very Chinese one, you know.
We couldn't resist, and almost immediately
put it in front of our Foton TV, you seen it before,
expelled the parents out of the room and asked them to be silent.
We put this exact tape in the recorder, pressed 'Rec',
then sat down calm for five minutes, listening to the song and recording it to the tape.
Much time has passed since, and now, 17 years later,
this tape still contains the record of the Robocop song.
Even now we can listen it and hear how it was.
As you can hear, many years later the record didn't lose its importance.
Even despite the awful sound quality, which didn't bother us back then.
I didn't see any Robocop movie yet when I first played the game.
Maybe the first one... Can't recall it for sure.
Certainly didn't see the second,
and the third one as well, because I didn't recognize the little girl on the Robocop's shoulder at all.
At the time I only knew about Robocop from the TV series that was running at Channel 35 here,
I think it was on the 2x2 channel and rebroadcasted here.
Also from the stickers from the 'Robocop: The Series' bubble gum,
they were sold here in mid 1990s, and I had a few.
So I didn't know anything else about Robocop.
Neither the story of the game, nor the story of Alex Murphy etc.
I first saw Robocop 3 the movie in late 1995, near the New Year.
It was aired on TV, can't recall the channel.
They probably aired the third movie alone, it was easily possible at the time.
So, when I and Vitaly were playing the game, we didn't know much about Robocop.
We thought that he is an invulnerable armed limb of the law,
who don't care when he gets hit or shot, beats everyone, he is like a superman.
What else would you want.
When we played it for first time, it seemed incredibly difficult to us, well, like any other game.
However, we managed to beat the first level in a couple of days.
We only had like 15-20 HP after this.
Like I told before, Vitaly was playing first, and I was playing after him.
We faced difficulty of the game right away.
How were we playing back then - just going through the level, missing all hits and shots.
We didn't even notice that we get hit.
That's because we were playing on the Foton TV,
it has color, but games were displayed in black and white.
In the game, when Robocop gets hit, he changes color.
Normally he is blue, his suit, I mean the armor, is blue.
When he gets hit, he flashes with orange, kinda brownish color.
We didn't see that in black and white of course,
so we didn't know that we were getting hit.
The only thing that displayed the damage is the HP meter
at the top left corner of the screen, next to the score.
By the end of the level, out of 100 HP only... Often it was none.
Sometimes it was like 10-12 HP left.
We collected all these 'P' jars.
We called them 'percents', because they increase percent of Robocop's power,
and could be used to repair him later.
When we were getting to end of the level and were repairing Robocop, I loved the screen.
I examined every small detail with a passion, I was eager to know what Robocop is made of.
What he has under the chest armor, under the hand armor, and so on.
Under the helmet, I wanted to see his face, because I didn't see it before.
So I examined his every detail and curve.
It was so cool when I press the button, and he gets covered with a perfect smooth surface.
Vitaly first taught me tactics in the game.
A few days later we realized that it is better to not rush in the game.
So we started to play carefully.
You normally don't want to stop often, because you want to feel the drive.
When you play carefully, you have to wait while every soldier...
We called them solders, but they are in fact members of The Splatterpunks gang,
But we called them 'soldiers', everyone in video games were 'enemy soldiers' for us.
So, when you wait until they pop out, it was annoying sometimes.
Especially these... damned sol... punks that hiding in the garbage cans.
It was like that since then, if there is a garbage can on the screen, an enemy hides in it.
So we were waiting until he is pop out to get him down.
That continued on the second level, on the third...
We weren't often get to the third level, I'll tell you about this too.
We were annoyed with this, but if you just walk past them,
they'll pop out, shoot you behind, drain a lot of HP, and game is over.
So Vitaly taught me to not rush in this game.
Well, we were learning the game together, I was giving him advices too.
It was him who shown me the secret room on the first level.
Don't know how he learned that, maybe a friend shown him.
I don't remember how he shown it to me for first time,
only remember that he got there and we were - 'Oh, see, we can cut the way here, alright.'
The 'percents' could be collected there, and these things...
...don't know, cakes with W letter, meaning 'Weapon'.
Don't know why, but Vitaly called them jellyfishes.
Everyone called them so, you get a jellyfish, and the weapon grade increases.
A normal gun, a machine gun that shots three times in a row,
Someday, if you get lucky, you may have the gun that shots in three ways at once.
The Select button switches between these guns and rocket launcher.
The last weapon grade is 'Bang'.
We had no idea what it is, as we never managed to get it.
I only did it much later, when we didn't play with Vitaly anymore.
Vitaly only shown me the secret room on the first level,
but there are secret rooms on the second and even on the fourth level as well.
I learned that like... ten years later, when I had Internet already,
and friends at Emu-Land told me that there are more secret rooms.
I was like - 'Wow, I was playing it my whole life thinking that there is only one.'
Well, the the third secret room on the fourth level is almost useless,
because it is just the repair screen rather than a secret area.
Usually I didn't have any 'percents' left for the fourth level,
so I had nothing to repair with.
Every time I'm playing the game I visit the first secret room.
Vitaly also taught me tactics on the ninja bosses of the second level.
There is not much of tactics, actually. You just have to run back and forth,
keeping the distance and not allowing them to attack you with the sword.
Eventually I did it another way. I was standing on the platform, luring out the ninja.
I even learned to shoot with Down+B.
It was a discovery that Robocop can shoot down.
You press B, then down, and he starts to shoot down.
If you screw it up, he won't do that.
Vitaly didn't manage to master it, maybe he didn't wanted, but I used it quite often.
We didn't get too far together with Vitaly back then.
We beat the first and second levels.
Vitaly was fighting the ninjas very well.
By the way, a funny thing is that there is a 'percent'
at right corner of the screen at the second ninja battle, but we didn't see that!
The reason is that the picture on the Foton TV is wider than the actual screen.
Playing on a black and white TV you would get behind the screen edge easily, this didn't bother anyone.
We weren't going to that side because we were fighting the ninja.
Can't recall how I learned this. Probably I seen it on a good TV,
and was very surprised that there is the 'percent'.
Being unable to see it, we weren't collecting it at the time.
We were getting to the third level.
The third level... Getting there was just fantastic, you know.
It seemed much more interesting, because Robocop has a jet pack there,
that allows him to fly instead of jumping.
But this level was so damn difficult, like a nightmare.
We only had 30 HP at the beginning of the level, maybe 40 in the best case.
And we get attacked from every side.
There are rockets flying around, shoot by the tank at the end of the level.
It took me a while to realize that they are flying top to bottom, down-down-down every time.
We thought they are flying at random and had no idea how to avoid them.
These rockets blew us away before we get to the middle of the level.
Our endless attempts to beat the game lasted for... something like a half of an year.
You would think that at least it is not TMNT that took six years to get further.
No, in fact we with Vitaly only managed to get to the third level at the time.
I get to the tank by myself,
because I started to play more often when Vitaly got more interested in hanging out.
And I was playing the console.
I managed to get to the tank once or twice, and got beaten there instantly.
So the very final point, the place where I could possibly get, was that tank.
It seemed just impossible to defeat it.
It could be done using the Bang weapon.
I was doing so when I started to play good enough
to get more weapons and not spend them, you won't get the Bang otherwise.
But it was much later, and back then our with Vitaly game was over at the third level.
We were desperate, because we couldn't get past that, it seemed incredibly difficult to us.
But we wanted to see what is next, it was the only cartridge we had... What you gonna do.
Yeah, Vitaly called the Dan.
Dan is actually Daniel, not Denis, as many thinking now.
So he invited Daniel, whom we called Dan.
I think he wasn't able to beat the game yet, but he was able to get further than we did.
Well, maybe he told that he beat the game, but...
When he came, we get him to play Robocop.
He got to the third level without much trouble.
He didn't know the secret rooms in the second and fourth levels too.
He got to the fourth level where you have to go back.
I think the fourth level is much easier than the third,
the tank does not shoot anymore at least, so you can take down everyone carefully.
Still, these guys that sitting in the holes, like the ones from the garbage cans, were annoying.
Dan has... Can't recall it clearly... I think Dan got to the end of the level.
We asked him before how far have he got in the game, and he said 'to the chicken'.
We had no clue what is the 'chicken' in the Robocop game.
When he got to the end of the fourth level,
we have seen the ED-209 robot that he called 'chicken'.
We didn't know... Maybe we had guesses what it is, Vitaly seen the movie more often perhaps,
But I didn't recognize it, so I called it 'chicken' too.
Dan failed to beat the chicken.
He lose there, he had continues and could start the level again.
I think he did, but still didn't defeat the chicken,
because he only had like 15-20 HP left.
Not more that 30 HP for sure, so ED-209 killed him every time.
Much much later the chicken got beaten by me, it was like...
Not sure, in 2002 maybe.
The thing is that when Dan failed to beat the game,
Vitaly and I thought that we aren't as good as him anyway.
Even with avoiding all attacks we didn't save enough HP.
Especially at the end of third and fourth level, where is almost no 'percents' to repair with.
Yeah. And...
Being distressed, we started to borrow other games from friends, and didn't return to the game much.
It was circa 2001 when the game got beaten for first time.
I went to the village with a friend as my guest.
We got the console and the 7-in-1 cartridge with us.
There we suddenly started to trying to beat Robocop.
We did play it before occasionally, but this time we get focused to do this.
We started to play, got through the first level, the second, third, fourth...
When we got to the fourth, I thought - 'Wow, Ilya is a really capable gamer',
Can't recall how we were playing, did we switch or not.
At the time we were playing without a system.
'Want to try?', 'No, give me to get through this part...',
'No, you do that...', 'I'll do it for sure, gimme the pad!'.
This way we got to the ED-209, and somehow, miraculously, managed to beat him.
Could you imagine, we beat ED-209 the chicken,
and got to the final level, an OCP building floor,
where you have to defuse a bomb and destroy the ninjas couple.
We had no idea what to do there, we shoot the ninjas, but they aren't die.
They keep attacking us, and it goes on and on.
When they blown us out right away, we got that something is wrong.
Then we walked to the end of the floor...
We didn't know that you can control the display using the Up button,
when something like defusing bomb or code breaking starts.
We didn't realize that yet, and the ninjas killed us few times.
So we got that we have to flee from the ninjas instead of attacking them.
Then, can't recall how, accidentally perhaps, he walked to the display and pressed Up...
Maybe he was shooting up to a ninja, or maybe he knew... I think he didn't.
We saw that Robocop is doing something, but nothing happens, he just stands still.
Suddenly, bam! A number appeared on the first display.
Aha! So we have to wait until numbers appear on every display, and something will happen.
And we managed to do that!
He was running from the ninjas, pressed the button,
getting the numbers one by another, then all of them appeared and started to blink,
The ninjas stand face to face and beheaded each other, just like in the movie.
Finally, we saw the so much desired and anticipated end screen.
Robocop, holding the little girl Nikko and the women Keiko...
...is she? Wait, Keiko is that girl... Was it a surname?..
Maria! The scientist woman who has been repairing Robocop the whole third movie.
They escaped the O.C.P. building explosion and flew away.
Then the high score table appeared, implying that we are cool and got a lot of score points.
I always thought that the second position belongs to George Harrison, the one from the Beatles.
My whole life I thought so.
I didn't know that the last position, J.TEL,
belongs to Jeroen Tel, the author of the amazing title song.
I didn't know names of the developers, and thought that it is George Harrison.
So we first beat the game in 2001... I think, not 2002 for sure. 2001 it was.
We were very happy.
It took six years, as you can see.
Beating the game...
This is certainly a kind of game where you just shouldn't rush forward shooting randomly.
You have to wait until every soldier pop up, dodge everyone, collect HP,
I got more than 250 HP once, and was shocked to see zeros.
It turned out that the counter goes crazy, it does not have greater numbers,
but when you get hit, you'll see 250 HP again.
It took my whole life to get this result, you know.
At the time even dreaming to get to the third level having 100 HP was unthinkable.
Get through the fourth level and save 60 HP would be huge as well.
Because it was not possible to repair there, like I said.
So, Robocop 3 game gave up to us after six years,
I was very happy, I already saw the first and second games at the time.
I liked them not less than the third, but I'll tell you about it some other time.
These were my memories about the Robocop 3 game on this... just lovely 7-in-1.
Someday I'll tell you how we were beating Snake Rattle'n'Roll there,
maybe about the Tale Spin too,
but all this will be in the future episodes.
For now, good luck to everyone, keep watching our channel,
love and play Dendy, and everything is gonna be great.
Bye.