This Week In Retro: Elevator Action Returns

March 1995: CREATaNEWSOCIETY

by Diamond Feit

I used to have this rule about sequels that stated they had to debut within a decade of the original work or else I dismissed them out of hand. Why would I make such a rule given that I have no authority on the matter? I suspect it was just one of the many little things I came up with during my teenage years to assert my intellect in conversations.

I can see why I would have considered a decade as a good standard considering most of the quality sequels I saw in my youth followed closely in the footsteps of their predecessors. James Cameron's well-regarded sequels Aliens and T2 premiered seven years after Alien and The Terminator—unusually late but still under the wire. Terminator 3 and the next two Alien movies crossed the decade line and faced a far harsher reception.

Of course today that rule seems downright quaint in an age where rights holders everywhere look 20, 30, or even 40 years into their back catalog for properties they can reboot or revive with the original stars if possible. While their batting average fluctuates wildly I can't deny that some of these so-called legacy sequels turn out great, making my one-time personal creed firmly obsolete.

30 years ago, Taito decided to put my theory to the test with a surprise sequel to a classic arcade game after 12 years of silence. I wish I had seen it firsthand back then for Elevator Action Returns would have blown my silly preconceptions to smithereens.

Taito's first Elevator Action had players guide a secret agent through a skyscraper starting from the top and heading down towards the basement to a waiting sports car. Endless waves of identical enemy agents patrolled the halls, trying to kill the intruder before he could swipe all the documents from offices marked with bright red doors—a terrible design choice for any counter-espionage organization.

Elevator Action Returns initially appears to be a higher-resolution version of the 1983 game, livened up with more detailed sprites and animations but otherwise playing by the same rules. Some improvements are immediately apparent: Players now get their choice of three different heroes—each with their own stats—and two players can team up for simultaneous combat. A new health bar means not every mistake ends in death, though falling from any height or getting caught in the path of an elevator remains fatal. The opposing forces have also diversified their recruitment tactics to include gunmen of varying heights and armaments along with trained attack dogs and robots capable of climbing walls and ceilings alike.

To better deal with this increased resistance, Elevator Action Returns features an expanded array of fighting techniques. Shooting and jump kicks remain on the table, but the protagonists can also find explosives hidden in breakable objects and behind select blue doors. Besides the basic handgun, scattered pickups offer machine guns and missile launchers with enhanced speed and power although ammunition for these special weapons is limited.

As expected, the mission begins with your agent(s) arriving on a building's rooftop with orders to head to the basement, making sure to stop at every red door along the way. Yet as players cross the halfway point the upper floors of the structure explode, signalling that this second adventure will not merely rehash the first. Subsequent levels feature different layouts leading up to a finale at a nuclear launch site, a far cry from the original game's infinite series of uniform high-rises.

As much as I appreciate the upgraded graphics, it's the revamped pacing that makes this sequel such a vast improvement over the first game. True to its name, 1983's Elevator Action feels like riding an elevator most of the time; enemies are slow on the draw and easy to outwit. Returns ups the threat level and your character's mobility in turn, making the entire experience that much more thrilling. The first time you knock over a barrel, roll it into a crowd, and shoot it to immolate four guys who die screaming, you'll giggle with glee.

There's also a greater effort at storytelling this time around, considering the original game didn't bother. Returns names and differentiates between all three heroes, pitting them against a clear villain who enjoys taunting them from his airship as he shouts "Crush the old order and create a new society!" These slogans also appear throughout the game in the form of graffiti spray-painted in hallways, adding literal and figurative color to the world.

No discussion of Elevator Action Returns could omit praise for the glorious soundtrack by Yasuhisa Watanabe, a longtime member of Taito's legendary house band ZUNTATA. Again, the first game offered only one background track and while it successfully earwormed its way into my brain, I would never listen to that song outside of the game for any reason. Watanabe's score for Returns, on the other hand, invites repeated listens due to its varied rhythms. In a 2012 interview on the official ZUNTATA website, Watanabe said he tried to approach the game's soundtrack like that of a movie, noting that the music changes mid-level rather than looping the same song for an entire stage.

Tragically, Elevator Action Returns never came close to matching the cultural impact of Taito's 1983 original. Despite a global release under the title Elevator Action II, I never saw it in any of my visits to arcades in the 90s, and a 1997 home port for the Sega Saturn only shipped inside Japan. Unless you stumbled onto it while experimenting with emulation, it's likely your first opportunity to play Elevator Action Returns came in 2007 when it shipped worldwide as part of the Taito Legends 2 arcade game collection for consoles and Windows.

This largely forgotten novelty kicked around the back of my brain for over a decade as a trivia tidbit, something I could bring up when chatting with a fellow arcade fan who might have no idea that Elevator Action even had a sequel, let alone one that recast the entire scenario as a gritty action spectacular. As online streaming grew in popularity, Elevator Action Returns turned into a rare treat that I might encounter on Twitch or queue up on YouTube should I feel the need to indulge myself.

In a most unexpected outcome, City Connection published Elevator Action Returns S-Tribute for consoles and Steam in 2022, a port based on the Saturn version loaded with new features and customization options. This version even includes the very first Elevator Action so players can amaze themselves at the difference between the two games. This means that unless Taito or another publisher decides to embrace light guns in this day and age, we can forget about any home ports of Elevator Action Death Parade, making S-Tribute a complete repository of the series at its peak.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.