A new feature called “Classic Tuesday”! This week we have an old arcade game with the best title in the universe: Armed Police Batrider.

Armed Police Batrider (hereafter referred to as “APB”, not to be confused with the arcade game APB- All Points Bulletin, which will be on Classic Tuesday soon) is another one of the Raiden clones that flooded the arcades. Gameplay is nearly identical to Raiden, in that you are constantly blowing up everything you see while simultaneously dodging ten zillion bullets. Since we got our hands on the Japanese version of APB, (Was there an American version? Comment below if you know.) the story remains somewhat of a mystery. What we do know is the following:

1. In the future, Manhattan is known as both Manhattan and “Violent City”
2. Things need to be blown up
3. Nothing is off limits, not even innocent parked cars (see left)
4. You choose from 3 teams: Police, Psychic and Climinal (yes, “Climinal”)

There are 3 levels of difficulty in APB. On the easiest, it’s pretty easy. On medium, it’s medium. On hard, it’s clearly impossible. On hard, your shots do hardly anything, and everything is happening on screen at once.

Everything.

Bullets? Yes. Explosions? Yes. Dogs, cats, surgery, the Oscars, breakfast, Riverdance? Probably. So much is happening on screen at once that the game achieves a sort of quantum state of action. So much is happening at once, that you can’t observe it all at once. Therefore, you must assume that anything and everything is happening.

Quite an achivement for an arcade game, if you ask me.

P.S. Also, there doesn’t seem to be anything in this game about riding bats.