I saw an interview with Nick Cannon where he related an anecdote about who he had a crush on when he was growing up. He stated that his was his current wife, and then it was quickly revealed to the unsuspecting viewer that he just went out and got famous and married Mariah Carey. I don’t have a similar story, I only mentioned it because for many years there was an Elevator Action in the basement of the arcade at Oskar’s Blues Bar in Lyons, Colorado and I looked forward to playing it every time I went. I was fascinated by the game as a child and it was really special to see the game on location as an adult. You never seem to really have enough time to play an arcade game on location, so I thought about it a lot. Eventually, the game was taken off-route and posted for sale on craigslist. Where I struck. It is mine! Unlike the aforementioned marriage, Elevator Action and I are still together. It is a ridiculous game to own as a stand-up arcade cabinet. It’s very simple – a 4-way joystick and two buttons to jump and shoot your gun – and for any arcade enthusiast starting to run out of space, it would be an easy one to get rid of because of how easily it can be reproduced on other systems. But there is a sense of wonder in Elevator Action, where it seems to be more than the sum of its parts.
Let’s make sure we talk about how the game field is configured, first. Do you see the brick pattern at the edge of the screen? The brick pattern that never changes, is not interactive and has no purpose? The CHEATERS put that there who made the game, and I can only assume it’s because they needed something static to allow the rest of the game to function correctly with the right frame rate.
The potential that Elevator Action offers is that something is happening in the rooms with the red doors – the secret plans are in there, and you need to go into each one, in order to make it past the level, but in fact the game does not address the inside of those rooms whatsoever. I do like that you can hide out in there until the essential chaos of the level you’re on is quieted. This seems like prime territory for “I know a kid that got the game to let you play inside the red doors” as an urban lie turned legend.
There is a grappling hook used to descend into the building to begin with – playing with it would be awesome! You can’t. There is a car that you get into to leave each board, but it’s not interactive. There is one weapon in the arcade version and it never changes. You CAN squash enemies under elevators, and you can see them knocked down the elevator shaft – and what a horrible way to go, gross! – so the game gives you just enough to make you feel like the developers put in more than they did.
Elevator Action’s sequels all seem to address the untapped potential – the Gameboy version has multiple kinds of weapons, including a much-needed shotgun for crowd control. The Sega Saturn version, which you can get on Steam these days, is very quick! With character selection and room-clearing explosives. Each new version tried to do something with it.
It was a pretty fun game in 1983 and now, of course, the gameplay loop happening in real life would be horrible and terrifying. This is some Charlie Hebdo massacre horror when looked through a modern lens. As an arcade game, Elevator Action is unique and approachable, it gets played more than others in my garage arcade. It is beautiful in its simplicity.
Elevator Action was played using the arcade cabinet version.