{"id":15517,"date":"2016-10-14T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T00:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=15517"},"modified":"2016-09-23T01:10:38","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T01:10:38","slug":"carys-top-ten-favorite-police-officers-in-video-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/14\/carys-top-ten-favorite-police-officers-in-video-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Cary’s Top Ten Favorite Police Officers in Video Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MAPPY\"<\/a>Over this past summer, and even some after that, there were a lot of news stories about police officers not doing what they should be doing, and it caused a lot of heat.\u00a0 Sometimes even in the form of riots.\u00a0 While I\u2019m sure that there are police officers who are corrupt and some who lie and make mistakes, I think the majority of officers are trying their best to do the right thing, and need our support.\u00a0 But that\u2019s just my personal opinion.\u00a0 So to show my support, here\u2019s a blog about my favorite police officers in video games, and I\u2019ll also share some ways I helped support our local police force in real life.<\/p>\n

So first let\u2019s get the important stuff out of the way and I\u2019ll share some ideas and things I did with my family this summer to help support local police.\u00a0 The first thing we did was really easy and inexpensive to do.\u00a0 We went to the dollar store and picked up bags of candy, chips, and other snacks like nuts and granola bars.\u00a0 We also bought a container to put them in and a thank you card.\u00a0 We then took the snacks out of the bags and put them in the container, along with the card.\u00a0 Then we went to our local police station and left the candy with the people at the front desk, so that when the officers go out on their shifts, they can grab a snack or two on their way out.\u00a0 What\u2019s cool is that when we went to the police station, there was a local business there doing the same thing for them!\u00a0 I also live close to where some of the police related riots were this summer, and I was glad to see a lot of churches were holding prayer vigils for the officers.\u00a0 We went to one of those as well.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure there are lots of other ways to help support your local police, and if you know of any ideas, please share them in the comments section!<\/p>\n

OK, now let\u2019s take a look at some of my favorite police officer video game characters.\u00a0 I wanted to just show police officer characters who were presented in a heroic and positive light, so no bad guy police officers here, like that one boss from Final Fight (did you know that when he spits out his gum before the battle, you can go pick it up to regain full health?\u00a0 Eww!).\u00a0 And as much as I like Sam & Max: Freelance Police, since those two characters brandish and shoot their guns with reckless and wanton abandon, and have some questionable moral ethics, I really couldn\u2019t put them on this list either, even if they are still pretty hilarious.\u00a0 Also, there may be some slight spoilers here and there, so you\u2019ve been warned.\u00a0 OK, on with the list!<\/p>\n

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  1. Keystone Kelly (Keystone Kapers)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I don\u2019t have very many good memories playing games on the Atari 2600, and I hate to say it, but I think one of the reasons is because a lot of them were just not very fun.\u00a0 Even a lot of the arcade ports, I said I\u2019d rather just play them in the arcade.\u00a0 But there was one company that made good games left and right on the 2600, and that was Activision.\u00a0 I knew of a few of them as a kid when I got an Atari 5200, like River Raid, but most of them I didn\u2019t discover until they came out with the PS2 Activision Anthology, which was a fantastic collection of most of their 2600 games.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the best compilations I can think of, and even rivals my favorite Namco Museums!\u00a0 One of the games on there is Keystone Kapers.\u00a0 You play as Keystone Kelly, a cop who must chase a robber through a department store.\u00a0 You can climb three levels using the elevator and escalators, and must catch the robber before reaching the top.\u00a0 You must jump and duck obstacles like shopping carts and other items, so it\u2019s a bit like a fast-paced Donkey Kong.\u00a0 But it controls well and is pretty fun, so he goes on the list.\u00a0 What\u2019s cool is that Garry Kitchen made Keystone Kapers, and he\u2019s one of the of folks who helped found Activision along with David Crane (creator of Pitfall) and others.\u00a0 What\u2019s even cooler is that I got to meet Garry Kitchen (and David Crane), at the National Videogame Museum opening!<\/p>\n

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    1. Chief Wiggum (Simpsons Road Rage)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Remember when I said that the police officers on this list were going to be presented in a positive light?\u00a0 Well, I made an exception with this one because he\u2019s just so darn funny.\u00a0 One of my favorite games to play on the PS2 was Simpsons Road Rage.\u00a0 Sure it was a blatant Crazy Taxi ripoff and SEGA probably had a right to sue, but the game was still fun and carried over a lot of the humor from the show.\u00a0 My favorite character to play as in the game was Chief Wiggum, because his police car had a siren on it and he would say some funny stuff.\u00a0 Like when he would pick up Snake the criminal, he\u2019d say, \u201cHey, don\u2019t I know you?\u201d\u00a0 I think aside from Wiggum\u2019s son Ralph and Mr. Sparkle, Chief Wiggum is probably my favorite character from the show, too.\u00a0 It would be cool if they would show him in a more positive light every now and then, but The Simpsons is a parody show so that\u2019ll probably never happen.\u00a0 Hopefully real police officers can take a joke at their own expense every now and then.<\/p>\n

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      1. Patricia Wagon (Mighty Switch Force)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        In this game you must catch some lady criminals in every stage, and you play as a female police officer named Patricia Wagon (get the joke in her name).\u00a0 The game kind of reminds me of a more puzzle-filled Mega Man X, and it was made by WayForward, so it\u2019s pretty good.\u00a0 I never played the sequel, where Ms. Wagon is now a firefighter.\u00a0 That would be a good blog idea, too, to make a list of firefighter video game characters (we support the local fire department, too).\u00a0 But there just aren\u2019t enough games where you get to play as a firefighter.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Lucia (Final Fight 3)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Back in the 90s, there were TONS of beat \u2018em ups.\u00a0 But while I did play a few, I missed out on a lot of them because at the time, I was more into 16-bit RPGs, and most of the beat \u2018em ups on home consoles were not that good.\u00a0 So I never played Final Fight 3.\u00a0 I probably would now, though.\u00a0 But I thought it was cool that one of the playable characters, Lucia, is a police officer.<\/p>\n

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          1. Blaze (Streets of Rage series)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            I\u2019m not sure if she\u2019s a retired cop or an undercover cop, as I don\u2019t keep up with the stories in beat \u2018em up games very well.\u00a0 But she\u2019s still cool and I pick her all the time when playing this game, so she goes on the list, too.\u00a0 I never had a Genesis as a kid, so I was WAY late to the party with this game.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even play it until it was on one of the collections on the Dreamcast, and that\u2019s when I discovered how good the Streets of Rage games were.\u00a0 They\u2019re on par or even better than Final Fight (at least the console ones anyway).<\/p>\n

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            1. Chun-Li (Street Fighter series)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              Again, I don\u2019t really keep up with the character storylines in fighting games, but Chun-Li is supposed to be an Interpol detective, right?\u00a0 So that\u2019s kind of a police officer, so she goes on the list, too.\u00a0 It would be cool if they played up her police roots more in the games.\u00a0 Maybe one of her alternate outfits could be a police uniform?\u00a0 I bet she goes through a lot of uniform pants with those big ol\u2019 muscle legs of hers.<\/p>\n

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              1. Dick Gumshoe (Phoenix Wright)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                The Phoenix Wright games are my favorite series on the DS, and I enjoy the 3DS ones, too.\u00a0 I\u2019m even playing the new one, Spirit of Justice, right now.\u00a0 In the games you mostly play as Phoenix Wright, a lawyer.\u00a0 You gather clues at crime scenes and then use those clues in a courtroom to catch witnesses in lies when you cross examine them.\u00a0 Of course, you\u2019ll come across a few obstacles in your investigations, and one of them is Dick Gumshoe.\u00a0 He\u2019s a detective, but he works for the police force so he goes on this list.\u00a0 His boss is actually the prosecuting attorney, Phoenix\u2019s rival, so Gumshoe\u2019s not always going to help you.\u00a0 But he\u2019s so loveable and nice that you can\u2019t help but like him anyway.\u00a0 Gumshoe is always down on his luck, and sometimes makes mistakes, but he always gives it his all and tries to do the right thing, and that\u2019s why he\u2019s one of my favorite characters.\u00a0 Only one I like better is the Blue Badger.\u00a0 I thought about putting him on this list, but the Blue Badger\u2019s just a police mascot, not as actual officer.\u00a0 In one of the games, I thought it was cool they added a similar police character to Gumshoe in the form of Maggie Byrd, who kind of pairs up with Gumshoe.\u00a0 So cute!\u00a0 He deserves a girlfriend.\u00a0 I wonder if he shows up in Spirit of Justice?\u00a0 Also, he has a cool theme song.<\/p>\n

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                1. Denise (The Misadventures of Tron Bonne)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                  I love love love this game.\u00a0 I\u2019m so sad we\u2019ll never see Mega Man Legends 3 because we won\u2019t be able to see further adventures of everyone\u2019s favorite sky pirate, Tron Bonne.\u00a0 Since you do play as a sky pirate in Tron\u2019s own game, Officer Denise is actually your opponent most of the time.\u00a0 But she tries so hard.\u00a0 She can even judo throw you when you\u2019re in your mech, and she\u2019s just on the ground standing there.\u00a0 Must be really strong!\u00a0 I think it\u2019s cool that by the end of the game, you actually end up helping Denise keep her job and catch an even bigger bad guy for her.\u00a0 One time I came up with an idea for a sequel to The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, and it would be two-player simultaneous and the second player would control Denise.\u00a0 I just think it would be funny to come up with scenarios where Tron and Denise have to work together, even though they\u2019re on opposite sides of the law.<\/p>\n

                    \n
                  1. Waffle (Tail Concerto)<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                    This is a forgotten PSOne gem that I also love a lot.\u00a0 In the game you play as an anamorphic police dog named Waffle.\u00a0 You pilot a mech around floating islands and you mostly capture naughty kittens and battle a trio of cat girl sky pirates. \u00a0It\u2019s like playing a cartoon.\u00a0 By the end of the game, you end up befriending the cat girl sky pirates and their kitten army, and work together to save the world.\u00a0 It\u2019s such a charming game.\u00a0 Waffle and the other Tail Concerto main characters also appear in the DS sequel: Solatorobo, but only as side characters in optional missions.\u00a0 But I\u2019m still glad we got both games in the US!\u00a0 For some reason, Tail Concerto also reminds me of Mappy, and speaking of which…<\/p>\n

                      \n
                    1. Mappy<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                      Big surprise here, I know.\u00a0 My favorite video game police officer is from a classic 80s Namco arcade game.\u00a0 Interesting thing about Mappy, when it was brought over to the US, Namco gave Midway the choice to either publish it or Pole Position.\u00a0 Midway chose Mappy because they had such big success with Pac-Man, they thought this cartoony game would be the next big thing.\u00a0 So Atari got Pole Position and you can guess who got the better deal out of that. It\u2019s a shame that Mappy wasn\u2019t as big of a hit here, because it\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n

                      You play as a police mouse named Mappy.\u00a0 You know how we have slang terms for police like \u2018cops.\u2019\u00a0 Well in Japan, one of their slang terms for police is \u201cMappo,\u201d so that\u2019s how Mappy got his name.\u00a0 The game is kind of a mix of Pac-Man and a platformer.\u00a0 Mappy chases a gang of cats into their hideout, and must retrieve the stolen treasures to move on to the next stage while avoiding the cats.\u00a0 You can jump on trampolines and use doors and other objects to stun the cats.\u00a0 There\u2019s a really neat trick to boost your score exponentially.\u00a0 The treasures you collect come in pairs, and if you can collect a pair in a row, you\u2019ll get a score multiplier. Keep on doing this and the multiplier will go up.\u00a0 So if you can collect the items in pairs and know which items score more, you can end up collecting the safes for 500 x5 points rather than just 500 points, for instance.<\/p>\n

                      Mappy got a few sequels as well.\u00a0 One was Hopping Mappy in Japanese arcades.\u00a0 You control Mappy on a pogo stick while hopping around in top-down viewed backyards while still avoiding cats and collecting treasures.\u00a0 It\u2019s really not that good, so you\u2019re not missing out on much.\u00a0 The NES got a few new Mappy games as well.\u00a0 The first was Mappyland, which felt like more of a true Mappy sequel than Hopping Mappy.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad Mappyland made it to the US.\u00a0 It was really fun and I rented it a few times as a kid.\u00a0 Another Mappy NES game that stayed in Japan was Mappy Kids.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little odd.\u00a0 You play as one of Mappy\u2019s two kids, Happy or Rappy, and they compete with each other to win the heart of a girl mouse named Picky.\u00a0 Gameplay is like a more competitive version of Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers, as this game has a split screen for two players.\u00a0 There\u2019s a few reasons why it never came to the US, but I won\u2019t go over them here.\u00a0 If you want to learn more, you can find out yourself.\u00a0 And finally, in the 90s Namco released some of their classics in arcades with \u201cArranged\u201d versions with improved graphics and gameplay.\u00a0 Mappy Arrangement played like the original game, but had a split screen mode for two players as well.\u00a0 Sadly, Mappy Arrangement is one of the few titles in that collection that never got a home version.\u00a0 It\u2019s a shame because it\u2019s really fun.\u00a0 All Mappy games have cute and colorful graphics and catchy ragtime style music<\/p>\n

                      Mappy\u2019s made cameos in other games, too.\u00a0 Like Ridge Racer and tons more.\u00a0 You\u2019d think by now he\u2019d have his own cartoon.\u00a0 Well, he sort of had one on YouTube.\u00a0 A few years ago, a web comic company called ShiftyLook published some web comics featuring Namco characters, and even made some YouTube cartoons with them.\u00a0 The Mappy cartoon wasn\u2019t much on animation, as it was mostly just still pictures while people talked, but it was still kind of funny and had a lot of other classic Namco characters in it, like Dig Dug and the Prince from Katamari Damacy.\u00a0 Too bad that ShiftyLook went out of business, but I think you can still read the comics and cartoons online.\u00a0 Well, I think I\u2019ll stop jabbering about Mappy, I could probably make a whole blog out of him.<\/p>\n

                      Cop-clusions<\/strong><\/p>\n

                      And those are my top ten favorite police officer video game characters!\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t think of too many honorable mentions.\u00a0 Is Jill Valentine a police officer?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know much about Resident Evil, and she does wear a police style uniform sometimes, but I don\u2019t know if zombies are a part of police jurisdiction.\u00a0 I guess zombies usually break the law at some point, though, so they probably would be. \u00a0I like calling her Jill Sandwich.\u00a0 Only other one I could think of was Detective Carrie from Drill Dozer, but I think only three other people besides me played that one.\u00a0 Anyway, in the comments section, let me know your favorite police officer game characters and if you have any ideas for helping your local police department!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                      Over this past summer, and even some after that, there were a lot of news stories about police officers not doing what they should be doing, and it caused a lot of heat.\u00a0 Sometimes even in the form of riots.\u00a0 While I\u2019m sure that there are police officers who are corrupt and some who lie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15517"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15519,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15517\/revisions\/15519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}