Police Trainer

[“Heck” – ed] the police

Nick remembers this forgettable game

» Arcade » 1996 » P&P Marketing

Have you ever ended up hating a game for reasons that had nothing to do with the game itself? I know I have.

Way back in the mid-nineties, I used to go to karate classes with my dad. He’d quite often be involved in teaching the kids, and then stay behind afterwards for the adult class – which meant that I had free run of the sports centre. If none of my friends were sticking about, I’d usually go and drop whatever change I had into one of the arcade games in the foyer.

There were only ever two games, back to back, but they were usually pretty good. Initially, there was Double Dragon (the one-on-one Neo-geo version) and Taito

Power Goal. Neo Turf Masters later went into the Neo-geo cabinet, and football fun gave way to Sega’s excellent Decathlete.

And then, one day, Decathlete was gone and in its place was Police Trainer. I

hated Police Trainer. There’s actually nothing wrong with it – it’s a pretty competent arcade gun game that consists of a series of shooting gallery challenges against a pseudo-vr backdrop. The idea is that it tests skills you’d need as a police marksman, and the challenges are broken down into categories such as speed, accuracy and visual acuity. But it wasn’t the bright, fun game that had been there before, and I hated it for replacing a game that I loved. Deciding that Police Trainer was essentially Point Blank, but without all the charm and variety of Namco’s classic game, I even went through a phase were I would refer to it exclusively as ‘Shit Point

Blank’ instead of using its actual name.

I feel bad for the developers, who almost certainly had no say in the placement of their game in my hyper-limited location. Objectively speaking I know the game is fine, and it was pretty popular, too, as it even got a sequel. But I can’t fight my feelings, and I feel that I’d much rather see Karl Vain and Rick Blade than the featureless dummies of Police Trainer in my location.