RoboCop Versus The Terminator - VIOLENCE MODE

Replay Burners' latest playthrough vid is especially exciting. This longplay of the Mega Drive / Genesis version of RoboCop Versus The Terminator takes place with the violence mode cheat code activated - this optional input introduces extra enemies to the game, including Terminator dogs in the future and female criminals in the present; RoboCop can also catch on fire, forcing the player to either shoot a fire hydrant or hunt down an automatic sprinkler system. That's not all though, the player behind the run, Jarl HL 3.0, makes a bee line for the game's many hidden stages, reminding me of a long-held query of my own. When you finish RoboCop Versus The Terminator, the closing credits ask you if you are sure you have found all the game's secret levels. This pointed needling always made me wonder if there was an alternative credit sequence that would then congratulate the player for finding all of the game's concealed areas? 

Since I was 12 when the game came out, I had more than enough time to play then replay this game, pushing RoboCop up against every wall and surface to see if they could be passed through. Make it into one of these offscreen spaces and (sometimes) a secret stage could be accessed by pressing up on the d-pad. Happily Jarl, on this impressively thorough run, doesn't discover any more areas than I had done myself. The hidden OCP office packed with Terminator found in the second stage or the Secret Remote Base - complete with background tile designs shamelessly cribbed from the industrial landscapes seen in Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira - were, I think, relatively well known but Jarl even hits areas I remember thinking were particularly obscure, such as the Secret Streets Exit found in the OCP building or the olive coloured, alternative version of Delta City. Watching today, these secret stages offer a slightly more experimental approach to the game, usually by packing the area with enough enemies to simulate a sort of bullet hell but also, in the case of an unfinished, palette swapped city, by focusing the level around a trepidatious, vertical, progression.