Pilot. This… series of articles seemed quite interesting to me, and I decided to share it with you. The idea is a little reminiscent of Retrozor, but Fen and Frank discuss legends, and here are forgotten games that, although they have not become extremely popular, are an integral part of gaming history.
The translation is a bit loose. I hope you like it.

Saturday Crapshoot is a series of articles by British journalist Richard Cobbitt, in which he talks about the forgotten, obscure side of the history of video games. In this issue: Traffic Department 2192

"I stopped you for speeding. Fine – death.»

Over the past 30 years, there has not yet been a platform that offers such a wide range of games as the PC. Among the computer games, there were such legendary games as Doom, and equally famous failures, like Daikatana or Jurassic Park: Trespasser. However, many of them did not go down in history and remained in its shadow. We will tell you about this shadow side in our new project.

Today we have one of those games that did not become particularly famous, but was quite interesting – Traffic Department 2192. This game has a rather strange name, very simple combat and enemy AI, whose action plan consists only of running circles around the city until you destroy it. More than 60 very similar missions, very low difficulty, plus only one battle theme and one ship. None of this makes the game a great shooter.

But she doesn’t need all this, the https://betycasino.co.uk/mobile-app/ game has Lieutenant Martha Velasquez.

TD2192 was released in 1994. Then there were no female protagonists at all, but they were very, very rare. The first main character of the game was Samus Aran from the 1986 Metroid, and on PC the baton was picked up by such games as Plundered Hearts (1987) and King’s Quest IV (1988). In shooters, the role of protagonists, for the most part, continued to be given to men, with the exception of games with humor, like Jill of the Jungle (1992) or Vixen (1988). The last one was especially outstanding, remember the same jokes about boobs in snowy levels… *Cough*

Velasquez belonged to a different type of heroine, one who might not even deserve to have a game named after her. At the beginning of the game, she is the best pilot in the city of Valthaven, in which the notorious Traffic Department [in Russian: ГИБДД] gives up handing out parking tickets and becomes the last line of defense against the invasion of an alien sect called the Vultures. 14 years ago, in front of young Velasquez’s eyes, they destroyed her father’s ship, which managed to move only a couple of meters from the base. Now Martha is following in her father’s footsteps, and her goal in life is to pay back the aliens in full. Just like the Angel of Vengeance. She is the worst nightmare of alien invaders, and perhaps one of the most memorable heroes in the history of shooters.

Games often paint protagonists as too… perfect (like Brian Basco from Runaway 2) without realizing it. TD2192 does not make such mistakes. She shows what a bitch Velasquez really is, exploiting this image to the fullest to create both comedy and drama. Suspended, she intimidates the clerk into sending her back to work. The annoying boyfriend who called her “sugar tits” [literally: sweet tits] is knocked out for 3 hours, and then, as if by chance, hints that he got off easy. Her closest friends throughout most of the game are the lecherous Controller, who likes to get into heated arguments with her between missions, and the robot bartender. The allies fear Velasquez more than meeting hordes of bloodthirsty Zealots.

"Velasquez hates pilots. Can’t blame her – they fly just as bad as the enemies.»

Interestingly, although the plot is set up by the death of her father, the game does not try to justify her behavior. Several characters sympathize with her, but only to a certain point. And if the rest of the staff shows leniency towards her, it is only so as not to worsen the situation for themselves. All this is fully demonstrated at the end of the first episode, when TD is ready to declare victory over the last (their own) city. Velasquez is tasked with flying a helicopter into battle and ending the battle triumphantly. Instead, the helicopter explodes on takeoff. The sabotage was carried out by her colleague, who I couldn’t stand this crap anymore. When she wakes up a couple of weeks later with her brain fried and metal replacing half her body, no one will dare to tell her how she accidentally twisted her pilot’s head during a fit of violent rage.

Some of this justifies her? Hell no. In the second episode, she continues to slide downwards, turning into a real psychopath. Now her goal is not just to kill all the Vultures, but also to make life worse for everyone she meets. When she is finally forced to obey orders in the final episode, most of her crew deserts the battlefield. However, after a victory it doesn’t get better… for anyone.

Unfortunately, the gameplay does not change after the heroine. You will never be in charge of anything on your own, the missions at the beginning of the game are absolutely identical to the missions at the very end – very simple battles, little variety, and practically no challenge. The best parts of TD2192 are the non-interactive dialogues – they add up to about half the novel – which precede the quests. So, finishing the entire game in one sitting is a bad idea if your eyes or sanity are important to you.

To summarize, I will say that the game evokes mixed feelings. In general, it is made well, but many individual aspects are very colorful and undeveloped. It also has some of the mildest sci-fi swearing (at one point, Velasquez meets the enemy who killed her father, and the best she can come up with is asking if he’s "K’r’rock-r’ox"), but scores points for mixing almost every sci-fi concept into one. Aliens, cyborgs, Transformers [not what you think], brainwashing, clones, mad scientists, spaceships, alien invaders… and an insanely drawn out story for a game whose gameplay is to fly around the city and shoot mindless enemies.

If you want to try Traffic Department 2192 for yourself, the entire game was released under a free license in 2007 and can be easily found on Google. In this game you will not find interesting gameplay, but a very unusual type of protagonist, which can only be found in Indian games. There have been better shooters. But Lieutenant Marta Velazquez is alone.