Game 463: Gang Wars (1988)

 

Most online sources give 1991 as the game date, but I can't find any supporting evidence. The title screen indicates a 1988 copyright.

       

Gang Wars

United States

Doerr Bros. Software (developer); released as shareware

Released 1988 (or maybe 1991) for Macintosh

Date Started: 3 July 2022

Date Ended: 24 July 2022

Total Hours: 15

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: 24

Ranking at Time of Posting: 215/483 (45%)

     

In the late 1990s, parents first started to hear about Grand Theft Auto, and there was a minor hysteria as news outlets reported about gleeful children bludgeoning hookers. It's a good thing they never learned about Gang Wars. Here, a decade earlier than the first GTA, the player can take any number of weapons to innocent businessmen and women, school children, and homeless people--and get character development points for doing so.

    

All of this would perhaps be disturbing in a more realistic game, but Gang Wars is essentially set in a fantasy city in which every gang member is a homicidal psychopath and thus deserving of vigilante justice. I rather enjoyed it--probably more than the GIMLET rating is going to suggest. There's a certain originality to it, both in setting and style. Unlike most shareware games, I can't identify a particular source that it's emulating. It was created by Tony and Chris Doerr, two brothers from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who briefly had their own game company. 

     

Gang Wars is set in a dystopian city in which gangs and rats are everywhere.

     

Gang Wars casts you in the role of a vigilante seeking to rid your city of gang violence. As the game begins, you give your character a name, after which the game automatically rolls values for starting health (100-170), fighting ability (40-60), marksmanship ability (40-60), martial arts ability (40-60), thieving ability (10-50), and money ($5-20). You then begin with bare hands and street clothes at the top of a gridded cityscape of around 9 x 9 blocks. I was unable to get in touch with either of the Doerr Brothers to confirm this, but I suspect the city map is based on their own East Cambridge neighborhood (one of the few New England neighborhoods designed as a grid); the place where you start is roughly where their own residence would have been on Gore Street. In the late 1980s, East Cambridge was one of those Southie-style working class Boston neighborhoods that you might find in a Dennis Lehane book, and I suppose there would have been a few junior gangs plus the occasional serious gang member from Roxbury or Dorchester wandering over from the Galleria. They've all been priced out now. 

       

Creating a new character.

      

There are five gangs in the game's unnamed city: Coyotes, Street Kings, Warriors, Dawgs, and Alley Masters. Each has a headquarters, which you'll encounter in the rough order of that list (which is also the order of difficulty) if you work your way clockwise around the neighborhood. You'll find weapon shops, armor shops, ammo shops, hospitals, and a pub scattered along the streets. There are lots of dead-end alleys with rats and hidden items to find (again, East Cambridge has a lot of these courts and cul-de-sacs in between the major streets).

      

The first "boss": The Coyote chief.

    

Gameplay is entirely turn-based. Gang members have territories, but they also spawn randomly as you explore the map. I never quite figured out whether the type of gang member that spawns is based on how many of them you've killed (including the leaders) or your own advancement in skill or hit points. Either way, at a certain point, Coyotes stop spawning and all your random encounters are with Street Kings. Then, Street Kings disappear and every spawn is a Warrior. And so on. Every kill gets you whatever weapons and armor your foe had, at least a few dollars, 8 more points to your maximum health, and one or two points to whatever skill governs the weapon you were using. In between combats, you can keep clicking "Pass" to restore hit points, two per click, but it's hard to find places to do that where you don't encounter random enemies faster than your hit points restore. An occasional trip to the hospital (or use of Band-Aids, a rare item) is inevitable, particularly when you get so much health that you're looking at a thousand clicks to restore it all.

 

The hardest part of the game is surviving your first combat, and I would maintain that it isn't even possible, even with maximum rolls, unless you go immediately east from the starting point to the first armor shop, which you'll hopefully reach before getting attacked by your first gang member. There, you need to steal either metal armor or a bullet-proof vest. You'll fail most of the time and have to start over--shopkeepers are deadlier than most of the enemies in the game--but I don't see any other possibility. Unarmed and unarmored, you can't finish a battle against even the lowliest Coyote. Once you have some armor, you can kill one Coyote and get his brass knuckles, and from there the rest of the Coyotes become a lot easier, especially since you become stronger with each kill.

   

The developers almost made the game deliciously subversive. Gang members aren't the only denizens you find on the map. You also find plenty of helpless citizens (businessmen, innocent ladies, bums, school boys) as well as minor offenders like pickpockets and vandals with spraypaint cans. The thing is, you also get health, money, and character development from killing these much easier opponents. There's enormous temptation to do so, even late in the game, because it never hurts to get a couple more points in your worst skill. If the authors had included more of these innocents in the early part of the game, it would have been a viable path forward to "grind" against helpless victims. As it is, you don't meet enough of them to boost you significantly before you inevitably die at the hands of the first gang member. As I said, thievery is the only option, which I guess is also a bit subversive given your mission.

      

Grinding against innocent ladies and bums.

   

There are some people who aren't innocent but also aren't gang members. These include pickpockets, vandals, and rats. None of them charge at you, but they'll attack if you get adjacent to them. I didn't have many qualms killing them, particularly since pickpockets steal your money and you have to slay them to get it back.

   

The game has the usual limitations of a shareware title from the early 1990s, but there are only three things I actively don't like about it. The first is that it relies exclusively on mouse control. Even if you don't hate the mouse as much as I do, you won't enjoy clicking "Pass" hundreds of times to restore your hit points. I don't understand why the SPACE bar wouldn't have done just as well. Second, it is absolutely impossible to flee from enemies. They move at your speed and stay right on your tail. Third, enemies themselves often decide to flee when their hit points get too low. When they do, you have to chase them into a corner to resume the fight, and you can't make a single mistake while doing so or you'll lose sight of them. Fleeing enemies don't disappear from the map, but they constantly flee relative to your current position, and if they're off-screen, it's nearly impossible to catch up with them. This is a particular problem when the leader of one of the gangs decides to flee, since you have to kill all of them to win the scenario.

        

Selections from the weapons store.

     

The trick to the game is managing your character development carefully. All the skills are important. They not only enable you to better use weapons of their type, they also protect you against those weapons. Fighting ability governs most of the weapons you find in the early game--bare hands, brass knuckles, knives, and daggers. It's easy to fall into the trap of getting up to 150 or 200 in that skill and then having nothing when you need to face down enemies with martial arts weapons (staves and nunchucks) or firearms. You also need a high martial arts ability to avoid having your weapons broken by some enemies. Thus, I found that a good strategy is to go find a Warrior as soon as you can survive a battle with one, as they have staves. After killing the first one, you want to stay away from them until you get your martial arts ability up to around 80, which keeps them from breaking your weapons.

   

You really need firearms to take on the final two gangs, but again it helps to practice on the lower gangs first. Once you kill all five gang leaders, you have to face "The Terminator" in the lower-left part of the map. When he dies, a door opens to the second city. 

        

The Terminator and I are about equally matched.

       

The economy is a strong part of the game, as there are certain weapons (like a flamethrower) that you can only buy. Hospitals consume lots of money for healing, which at high hit point maximums is almost necessary to avoid standing around clicking "pass" hundreds of times. Ammunition is relatively expensive and needs to be replenished. Dynamite blows holes in walls, something that's necessary on the second map.

      

Ordering drinks (and hints) at Joe's Bar.

    

Each map also has "Joe's Bar," where you can purchase drinks for hints. The clues in the first city are:

1. The gangs number five, as do their leaders.
2. Kill all five to open the door
3. Stealing from a shop keeper can be your last decision
4. The chance of stealing is your raw ability. Failing is too easy until you get good.
5. The Dawgs are left above the Alley Masters. The Coyotes own right here.
6. The exit appears in the Terminator's lair. Go through the exit, and you will find another city which is even less kind.

   

The second city is more of a maze than the first one, and there are a few areas inaccessible unless you use dynamite to blow open some walls.

 

The gangs in the second city are Dragons (armed with flame throwers), Robots (shotguns), Droids (flame throwers), Road Masters (shotguns), and Maulers (chainsaws). Technically, I guess only four of these are gangs, as per the hints below, but I couldn't tell which of them were just random enemies. I'm also not sure of the order of difficulty listed above, as all of the enemies are deadly.

         

Enemies in the second city get a little ridiculous.

       

Joe's Bar clues are:

     

• The gangs number four, as do their leaders.
• Kill all four to finish.
• A chainsaw can be tough on your clothing.
• Us shopkeepers don't just carry pistols anymore.
• Do you want it straight or on the rocks.
• A low martial arts ability can result in a lot of broken weapons.

    

It's funny that that last entry is the most expensive one at the second bar, because if you hadn't figured that out by now, you'd be in a lot of trouble.

    

I initially played the game using the Basilisk emulator, but I guess the OS was too advanced for the game, and something was preventing it from saving. I spent about 11 hours trying to win the game with permadeath unintentionally in play. I thought I had a technical issue getting it to run with Mini vMac, but it was just me being stupid. Once I figured that out, saving worked as usual, and I was able to press forward for the win.

 

The second city is a lot deadlier than the first, and there's essentially no way that you can rest and heal in a corner after combats. You want to bring plenty of money, ammunition, and Band-Aids from the first city, using hospitals to pay for healing when possible and Band-Aids when not. There are enemies here with rocket launchers; you can also buy the launchers but not the ammo, which you must find. I found rocket launchers too dangerous (you can get caught in the blast radius) for regular use, but they help with some of the walls. 

        

I engaged the Dawgs too soon.

       

Once you kill the fourth gang leader in the second city, the game freezes on his death screen with a brief message: "Congratulations!! You have restored law and order to both cities. Saving two cities is hard work. Go take a break."

   

The winning screen.

     

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

   

• 2 points for the game world. I like that it's different from the typical RPG, but there's no backstory or worldbuilding or even names for the cities.

• 2 points for character creation and development. You grow in power rapidly, and I like the need for balance among the skills, although it prevents you from playing a specialist. Character creation is somewhat meaningless, as variances in the random roles are soon obliterated by rapid character development.

• 1 point for NPCs, even if all they do is tempt you as targets.

      

A school boy brings a knife to a shotgun fight.

      

• 3 points for encounters and foes. Enemies are a bit different than in the typical RPG and have various attack and defense strengths that you have to learn and respond to.

• 2 points for combat. Combat involves little more than walking or shooting in the direction of the enemy, but weapon selection is important.

        

Taking on the toughest gang leader in the first city with a pistol.

       

• 3 points for equipment. Various types of weapons, armor, and usable items.

• 4 points for the economy, which lacks complexity but remains relevant throughout the game.

     

Restocking ammo isn't cheap.

     

• 2 points for a main quest.

• 1 point for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are only serviceable, not attractive. There is no sound, and the all-mouse interface gets tiresome.

• 4 points for gameplay. It's linear and not very replayable, but it's just about the right length and difficulty.

   

That gives us a final score of 24, which I would regard as quite high for a game that has such a limited online profile. 

       

Ah, for the days in which one just had a single "OnLine Screen Name."

           

I'd love to hear from the Doerr Brothers about the genesis of this game, and whether I'm right about East Cambridge. I found some candidates but had not heard back from inquiries at the time of this entry, so I can only hope one of them finds this entry and responds.