Street Hawk

Ocean Software - 1986

Street Hawk followed the adventures of Jesse Mach, an ex-police motorcycle cop injured in the line of duty, recruited for a secret government initiative to ride Street Hawk. The shortlived show was only thirteen episodes long and is remembered for the crazy stunts, music from synth-gods ‘Tangerine Dream’ and of course the bike itself, with all its wicked weaponry and speed shattering ‘hyper-thrust’ mode which allowed the bike to travel at up to 300mph!

And so, to the video game released in 1986 by Ocean Software, in which you control Street Hawk and scroll up the screen shooting bad guys, evading police and jump over civilian cars that get in your way. You also have two missions to deal with, a robbery and a kidnapping which once complete causes the game to loop and make you do it all over again. On arriving at the location of the robbery, the game switches to a ‘shooting gallery type’ game where you get to take out the bad guys before switching back to driving mode. Once you have done both missions twice, it’s on to one final easy mission where you have to shoot a bad guy in his Porsche — and that’s it, job done.

While not a bad game, the development was fraught with delay — so much so that the C64 version never got released and the ZX Spectrum version was rushed out initially as Street Hawk : ‘Subscribers Edition’, a completely different game (think Defender but on a bike). Finally, the game was re-programmed and appropriately released on the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC which were identical bar a few minor touches.

By far, one of the shortest and easiest games Ocean has ever done.

Images below from ZX Spectrum full and subscriber versions.