City Connection
1985 · Racing · Arcade
Overview
City Connection is a 1985 platform video game developed and published by Jaleco for arcades. It was released in North America by Kitkorp as Cruisin'. The player controls Clarice in her Honda City hatchback and must drive over elevated roads to paint them.
Deep Dive
City Connection is a 1985 platform video game developed and published by Jaleco for arcades. It was released in North America by Kitkorp as Cruisin'. The player controls Clarice in her Honda City hatchback and must drive over elevated roads to paint them. Clarice is pursued by police cars, which she can stun by hitting them with oil cans. The design was inspired by maze chase games like Pac-Man (1980) and Make Trax (1981).
Developer Story
City Connection was developed by Jaleco in 1985. Players drove a car around the world, covering road tiles with paint while avoiding police and cats that appeared from oil cans. The game's mechanic of covering every road tile gave it a completion-based objective unusual in arcade games. The world tour setting — from New York to London to Paris — gave it an aspirational travel theme.
Did You Know?
- City Connection's objective — painting every road tile while evading police — was entirely unique in 1985 arcade gaming.
- The car could bounce off the sides of the screen, wrapping around horizontally — useful for evading police but disorienting for new players.
- Oil cans produced cats when hit, which instantly killed the player on contact — a whimsical hazard in an already unusual game.
- The world tour locations — each with a distinct backdrop — gave players a sense of international travel unusual in arcade games.
