Space Chase Part One: City Under Siege

Space Chase Part One: City Under Siege is the first episode of the shareware side-scrolling platform game, Space Chase, which seems to have been greatly inspired by Apogee's Duke Nukem and Bio Menace. The story of Space Chase takes place in the future. The protagonist, Jason Storm, was born on a backwater planet and joined the army in hopes for a better life. He quickly rose through the ranks, first as a Marine and then as a Spec Ops operative. He became so good at doing his job that his superiors considered him dangerous, and eventually he was discharged from the military at the rank of Major. Now turned freelance, Jason Storm is tasked with thwarting the plans of an evil corporation, conveniently called Evil Guys, Inc., that is bent on world (galactic?) domination. The first episode, as the title suggests, takes place in a large futuristic city.

The gameplay is rather typical and consists of running and jumping around the levels, collecting ammo, keys, health and various bonus items, and battling (or avoiding) monsters. The visual design bears a great similarity to the first Duke Nukem game, from the appearance of the main character and many monsters to the Pepsi cans that replenish Jason Storm's health (compare to Cola cans in Duke Nukem games). However, there are differences as well: the ammo is limited, and some monsters can only be temporarily knocked out but not dispatched for good, so the players sometimes have to avoid the enemies rather than fight, and plan their progress more carefully. The levels are also quite large and have many optional areas that contain non-essential powerups (like bonus items that only add to the overall score) which the player might decide to skip in order to conserve ammo. Luckily, the game can be saved at any point in the level, making playing a bit easier.

Space Chase was distributed per the Scott Miller model, with the unregistered first episode being essentially a free stand-alone game. City Under Siege consists of ten levels, and subsequent registered episodes also have ten levels each. Also, cheat codes are not available in the unregistered version.