Spy Hunter - Legacy

Legacy

Following the success of the arcade version of Spy Hunter, a pinball version of the game was released in 1984 by Bally. The original Spy Hunter was followed by an arcade sequel, Spy Hunter II in 1987. It retained the Peter Gunn music and incorporated a cooperative two-player mode, but the top-down view was replaced with a more 3D perspective from behind and above the car. Though seemingly more realistic, the different perspective was unpopular and clumsy. The game achieved little success and remained largely unknown as it never went into large scale production. After Japanese video game developer Sunsoft reprogrammed the original arcade game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Sunsoft later created Battle Formula, featuring very similar gameplay, but to avoid copyright infringement outside of Japan and to understand the point of the game only by its front cover, Sunsoft America signed a deal with Bally Midway in adding it to the Spy Hunter series by releasing it outside of Japan as Super Spy Hunter.

Spy Hunter itself is regarded as one of the "Top 100 Videogames" of all time by the Killer List of Videogames (KLOV).

This game inspired an enhanced remake, which was developed by Paradigm Entertainment and released by Midway Games for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, Game Boy Advance and Microsoft Windows in 2001. The game featured a shift towards mission based gameplay, and featured vehicles that switched seamlessly between land and sea. A sequel developed by Angel Studios was released in 2003.

Another reboot of the series was developed by TT Fusion for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita and released by Warner Bros. Interactive in October 2012.