Cartridge Diaries: City Connection

Next up is an interesting gem from the 80s known as City Connection.

City Connection is very much a game of it's time, the object of which is to travel to the major cites of the world which is represented by platforms and a neat background and paint the platforms to indicate that you've been to that location using a small Honda City car which was very much the ideal small car of it's era in Japan all the while avoiding police and naughty cats evading them using skill and oil cans. The game can be seen as very similar to the earliest platform titles like Joust and Super Mario Bros and is not shy about it but what is unique is that it contained different music or variations of said main theme in all the levels, while mostly using public domain music you can also hear a track from Deep Purple on the London stage; that might not seem like much but in 1985 it was a unique feature especially when sound files are usually the biggest eaters of space on any game of that time.
Because of it's early release in the gaming era it only got as far as the Nes and ZX Spectrum beyond it's arcade release and became even more forgettable when in the Nes release, the rarely seen female driver Clarice was replaced by a nameless male driver. For a good couple of decades the game went into obscurity along with the company Jaleco who at one point just stopped making games, however it received enough of a cult following for a revival on phones with Clarice returning as lead along with new graphics and added game features.
Current State: Jaleco don't make games anymore so the rights for the title were moved to a publisher who re-released the game as a virtual console game, it's unclear whether Hamster, the current rights holder also did the Cellphone game, as it was recent it's fair to say that there is still interest in this small franchise.
Why Should it be Revived?: Splatoon is the key word in why it should be revived as this is pretty much the Splatoon of the 80s. Clarice is a well designed character to appeal to a mass audience and there's limitless potential just to take the idea and run with it. However because Splatoon is already in the current market, City Connection would have to do something special to win over that audience.

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