Data East had some awesome arcade games back in the day. If you play them enough, you’ll soon discover the machines were all based on just a few arcade boards. You’ll find different titles and characters, but overall play mechanics and styles were the same.

That doesn’t make their games any less fun (or token hungry). It just goes to show you, solid game formula and fun will win out all the time.

Nothing says this more like Data East’s Sly Spy. Sometimes called “Secret Agent”, perhaps one of the more fun games back in the day. A solid mix of just familiar enough tunes (just slightly enough to be not 007 tunes), secret agent gadgets, vehicles, and a variety of stages made this game shaken not stirred cool.

Controls are pretty simple. You jump and shoot. Run out of bullets and you kick and punch. You grab power-ups along the way to fill your “Golden Gun” meter. Fill it up enough and you’ll be awarded with a screen clearing, one-shot-many kills gun. I’m not sure how the whole Golden Gun thing escape the Bond franchise owner’s eyes, but hey, whatever.

The icing on this game, like most of the classic games from this period, is the use of digitized voices. You’ll hear “Golden Gun” when you pick it up and bunch of other voice “nuggets” add enough spice to keep you going.

You’ll go under-water, cycle riding, sky diving, and a whole bunch of other stuff besides just running and shooting baddies in this game.

Good news here is that this game is totally available today. You can pick it up as part of the Data East compilation disc for Wii (just $19.99!), so you can play this legally and happily.

This game oozes classic gaming. Remember those “Winner’s Don’t Do Drugs” messages? Yeah, it’s in here.

If you enjoy this piece of classic arcade gaming, then you’ll likely enjoy RoboCop, Data East’s movie tie-in. Unfortunately, that game isn’t available too many places.

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