Manhattan 24 Bunsho

The game intro shows that convicts have taken over the prison and many have escaped. Your job, as a policeman, is to kill the escapees. Your view is slightly up and at an angle from the side -- very similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Simpsons.

The scenes move from right to left and are basic city scenes. First, there are downtown streets, then the park, then a bridge, etc.

You can obtain different weapons: pistol, riot rifle, tear gas gun and maybe more. The Weapon Select button cycles through your weapons via a display at the bottom of the screen. When the desired weapon is higlighted, press the Fire button to shoot it. Hostages will randomly run across the screen. Grab them for extra weapons, but if you shoot them, you'll lose weapons.

Easter Egg: From the beginning of the game, rescue four hostages in a row. You have to do this to get the tear gas gun. Shortly after getting the fourth hostage, there will be a convict shooting down at you from a building. He is the first window shooter in the game. Gas him to get an interesting peep-show!

The rumors stating that the game has an ending and that there is brief female frontal nudity during the final ceremony appear to be disproven by the following update:

Level five takes place inside the prison. At the end of the level, the wardon is strapped to a chair and guarded by several prisoners. If the warden is hit with even one shot, the game is over no matter how many lives are left. I do not the remember if there was a sequence after this, but perhaps the list of the makers of the game is displayed. After level five, the game begins again at a more difficult level. If all five levels are completed 20 times (level 100), the difficulty is reset to that of level one.

It is not known if it is possible to kill the bikers that appear if you stay in the same spot for too long.

Japanese version of Jail Break.

This game is quite advanced for it's time. It offers good multi-sprite movement and decent (frustrating) artificial intelligence. It also has a host of semi-understandable speech phrases such as "Help me!", "Save the hostages.", "The warden has been taken hostage."