APB: A massive city, bursting with criminals to be arrested

Life as an American traffic cop is never easy but poor ol’ officer Bob seems to be in it up to his neck, what with litter-bugs, dope peddlers and the cantankerous station Sergeant to deal with. Everyday Bob gets a new quota, each one bigger than one before. To fill it Bob must arrest a set number of litterbugs, drunks, hitch-hikers and such-like. These aren’t likely to resist arrest, but to find them you need an eagle eye and a good patrol pattern in a very big city.

Occasionally you’ll get an All Points Bulletin which means a criminal a notch above your average lager lout is on the loose. Keep your eyes peeled for a master criminal such as Sid Sniper or Freddy Freak and standby for a fast chase. If you catch the felon it’s back to the police station for a spot of interrogation. Needless to say the criminal has the right to a lawyer, to remain silent etc… but if you can get a confession out of him – before the chief arrives at the cell – you can forget about quotas for the rest of the day! So when the scene switches to the police cell waggle your joystick as fast as possible to shake some sense into the fiend.

While back on the beat you can arrest an offender by touching him (or her) with the Steering Wheel Cursor which is fixed just ahead of your police car. Press fire and the siren should force him to pull over. Hardened criminals may ignore the siren for a bit – APB offenders need to be rammed off the road – and later on in the game you’ll need a gun to shoot up their cars. But if you shoot an innocent bystander, or crash into a vehicle with the siren off, or fail to meet a quota, then you’ll gain a demerit point. Collect enough demerits and you’re kicked off the force. Tracking down all those criminals can get a bit tiring, so why not stop off for a doughnut to extend your time limit? Then there’s the money bags which you can pick up to boost your revenue, very useful for the Speed Shop where you can buy better brakes, radar, turbocharge your engine and top up your gas tank.

news source: AF/AP/CU/AC / image source: GenerationAmiga / watch on Youtube / download APB Commodore64, Amiga, Atari, MS-DOS