I bought the three titles in Midway’s early-aughts Spy Hunter revival at the same time from a used game store a couple years back. The clerk looked them over and said, “Wow, I’ve never heard of these games. They must be really good if you like them so much!”

“No,” I replied. “The first game just has a lot of sentimental value for me, and I never played the other two.” I paused before adding, “I hear they weren’t very good.”

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I initially played Spy Hunter at about the same time that puberty walloped me. Let me tell you: hormones. Didn’t know what to do with them. That’s the sentimental value. I suddenly became aware that certain parts of my body wanted attention, and this was the game I was playing at the time. I bet you feel better for knowing that.

BRING IT BACK IN ONCE PIECE, 007

Spy Hunter is Midway’s revival of the 1983 arcade title, which was pretty good. The idea is that you’ve got a James Bond-style spy car that has machine guns, oil slicks, and so on. It’s an eternally appealing concept.

But whereas later vehicular combat games like Interstate ‘76 or Vigilante 8 or Twisted Metal are arena-based, the original Spy Hunter is closer to a vertical shoot-’em-up. For this new iteration, it’s sort of just a 3D reimagining of that. It’s essentially linear and split into levels, but the big twist on the formula is that now you have to complete objectives along the way. Objectives largely mean that there are objects along the way that you need to shoot or hit with special weapons. Sometimes you have to find detours to hit these things. That’s, uh, about it.

So, yeah, not all that deep, but a lot of games are designed like roller coasters where you don’t have much control, but you feel like you do. Or, in another sense, you can look at it like a rail shooter, even if it technically isn’t, because there’s nothing guiding your car. Hm…

INTERCEPTOR ADVENTURE RACING

Weirdly, in my mind, the game that Spy Hunter feels closest to is Beetle Adventure Racing for the N64. While the games are more-or-less different genres, both feature a straight-shot path with diverging routes. Spy Hunter doesn’t get as complex as the tracks in Beetle Adventure Racing, but it’s a similar idea. The comparison also gets hammered home by how sluggish and cumbersome your car is.

Oh, no way… That might be shockingly astute. I’m just learning this now, but apparently, Paradigm Entertainment, the developer for Spy Hunter, also had a supporting role in creating Beetle Adventure Racing. By “supporting role” it looks like they did everything except the core design, which is attributed to folks at EA, while the work itself – such as the programming and art – was done by Paradigm. So, that may explain the similarities.

Sometimes I astound myself.

Anyway, your car, the G-6155 doesn’t feel much like a cutting-edge, high-tech sports car. It feels like a Volkswagen Beetle. And now that I’ve made that correlation, I suddenly really appreciate that.

INVESTIGA-AWESOME

Hold on. You know what, I’m going to dig deeper into this. I reached out to Shawn Wright, who is listed as Art Director on Beetle Adventure Racing and Game Designer/Level Designer on Spy Hunter. Here’s what he told me:

Beetle Adventure Racing level design and mission creative direction was done mostly by myself and Scott Jackson from EA. Scott Blackwood was the Executive Producer and directed the overall project. Great team that taught me a lot about line of sight, vehicle games, and hero experiences. Spy Hunter was designed in house mostly by Wes Hoffman and myself with Midway production led by Michael Gottlieb backed by an incredible creative and engineering team. I was very influenced by EA and BAR on track design. We were able to take it to the next level with the water capabilities bringing rivers, lakes, canals, and swamps into the mix. Wes chose the locations based on these capabilities.

Shawn Wright, Game Designer/Art Director

So, there’s your direct link. Lessons learned from Beetle Adventure Racing were applied to Spy Hunter, hence the similarities. Is Spy Hunter somewhat of a spiritual successor to Beetle Adventure Racing? Kind of. Is it as good? No.

But Beetle Adventure Racing has dinosaurs and aliens. It got really weird with the concept, which would have been awesome with Spy Hunter, but clearly not the tone they were going for. So, not a very direct comparison.

NARROWER BEETLE

Like the arcade original, the Interceptor can transform. But while it was just a car or boat in the first game, it also transforms into a motorcycle (and, by extension, a motorcycle boat), when it takes too much damage. And while that technically just means it’s a car, a car on water, a narrower car, and a narrower car on water, to its credit, each mode does handle differently. The extra detail is what demonstrates that Paradigm had fun with creating it. It’s not simply a Beetle, a Beetle on water, a narrower Beetle, and a narrower Beetle on water.

Unfortunately, the motorcycle isn’t situational. There aren’t moments where you need to shed your car-flab to fit through narrow spots. It’s entirely just a way of emphasizing how much damage you’ve taken. In that sense, it’s effective.

After each level, your Interceptor receives an upgrade, but the upgrades are very static. You don’t pick what you get, and they aren’t rewarded for, say, completing enough secondary objectives. It’s mostly a way of telling you what new mechanic is being added to the next level. If you decide to backtrack to complete secondary missions that you missed, you don’t keep the upgrades you later unlocked. That level always has the same arsenal. It’s very mechanical in that sense

TRABBY

However, that does lead to Spy Hunter’s greatest strength, which is that there’s a great deal of variety packed into its rather narrow concept. It’s obvious that a lot of thought has gone into making each level distinct, even when some of them take place in the same environment.

About half-way through the game, the Interceptor is replaced with an upgraded model, which trades out most of its gadgets for new ones, allowing for completely new types of objectives to be added. One of the most prevalent is the ability to scan vehicles for bombs or illicit cargo. This kind of sucks because a big green circle gets pasted on your screen. Like, an X-ray visor or Detective Vision from Batman: Arkham Asylum. I think the developers recognized this, because they helpfully mark the objectives that may contain scannable objects, so you don’t have to just scan everything.

This also leads to its greatest weakness, which is that some of the missions are kind of painful. To get really specific, one of the later levels has you targeting missile carriers. Once you get close to them, they’ll start a launch sequence, giving you a few seconds to take them out. However, there’s no guarantee that you’re on the same route they’re parked on. You might have chosen to drive up the dock, rather than through the cargo ship, which means you can only watch the reticle until the missile fires. That probably should have been a secondary objective, or the carriers should have been placed in choke points, because, as it stands, you have to memorize where they are.

Speaking of which, there’s one mission where you start off without your Interceptor. You’re behind the wheel of some Eastern European car, and you have to drive out of a factory to get to a re-arming truck that will give you an Interceptor for the rest of the mission. It’s a cool idea, but you’re started off with a short window of time to escape the factory. And in order to do so, you have to drive perfectly. This means you’ll probably have to attempt the mission multiple times until you have the segment memorized. That kind of sucks.

TITLE THEME INCLUDED

It’s too bad, because they almost nail it with the missions. You have to clear not just the primary missions, but enough of the secondary ones to progress. That’s a decent reason to replay missions without needing to require memorization in certain places.

But, I get it, even with its requirement to repeat missions, Spy Hunter is, like, two, maybe three, hours long. It makes sense. Imagine a racing game where you only play each track once or twice, it’s a lot of design work for very little payoff. I think more could have been done to stretch things out, but, if I had to guess, Midway probably wanted Spy Hunter out during the PS2’s honeymoon phase. It likely had to keep a tight scope.

As it is, the remake of Spy Hunter isn’t a bad game. I think in a post Split/Second world, the concept could be taken a lot further, but for 2001, it feels about right. If this was still the early ‘00s, I’d probably be telling you it’s worth a rental, but today… Hold on, I’ll look up the going rate for a copy…

Yeah, for the $10-$15 Canadian loonies that it goes for these days, it’s worth it. And now we have that discovered link to Beetle Adventure Racing to add to the appeal, so maybe check it out.

Unfortunately, Paradigm Entertainment wasn’t involved with the sequel. Apparently, this was due to Infogrames purchasing Paradigm in 2000. According to Shawn Wright, Midway wanted them on board, and the team wanted to do it, but “it wasn’t in the cards.” The second one wasn’t as well received at the time, but I’m going to find out for myself how Angel Studios handled the license.

6/10

This review was conducted on a GameCube using a disc copy of the game. It was paid for by the author. Screenshots were upscaled and captured through a RetroTink 4K. The line-of-consciousness writing is an accurate representation of how this review developed, including the impromptu interview.